3 Pitfalls Everyone Should Avoid with Hybrid Multicloud (Part 4)

The daily cloud hype is all around you, yet there are three pitfalls everyone should avoid.

From cloud, hybrid cloud, to hybrid multicloud, you’re told this is the way to ensure a digital future for your business. These choices you’ve got to make don’t preclude the daily work of enhancing your customer's experience and agile delivery of those applications.

Let's take a journey, looking closely at what hybrid multicloud means for your business. Let's examine the decisions being made when delivering applications and dealing with legacy applications. Likely these are some of the most important resources to your business.

This article highlights three pitfalls everyone should be aware of when transitioning into hybrid multicloud environments. It's based on experiences from interactions with organizations working to conquer hybrid multicloud while delivering their solutions.

In part one, we covered the basic definitions to level the playing field. We outlined our views on hybrid cloud and multicloud, making sure to show the dividing lines between the two. This set the stage for part two, where the first pitfall discussed why cost is not always the obvious motivator for moving in to the cloud. Determining if moving all workloads in to the cloud is viable was explored in part three.

Finally, in part four we look at what to do with your data in the cloud. Should you move data in to the cloud? How much? What data in the cloud works and what is too much of a rick for the cloud?

Data... data... data

The first thing about cloud and data, the crucial factor to all your decisions, is determining your bandwidth and storage needs.

A recent article stated that, "Based on Gartner's projection that data storage will be a $173 billion business in 2018." This has caught your attention as you're looking to push workloads and storage in to the cloud.

The article goes even further to state that, "Companies globally could save $62 billion in IT costs just by optimizing their workloads.” After reading the previous articles in this series, you should not be surprised at this statement. What is surprising follows when they state that, “Only 25% of companies would save money if they transferred their server data directly onto the cloud.”

Wait a minute, work loads can be optimized for the cloud, but only a small percentage of companies would save on data in the cloud?

If you consider that cloud providers often charge rates based on bandwidth, moving your data from on premise to the cloud quickly becomes a cost burden you don't want to carry. Putting data in the cloud is a rare occurrence, usually something like this:

• A single cloud with storage and applications
• Applications in cloud with storage on premise
• Applications in the cloud and their data cached in cloud, storage on premise

In the first bandwidth costs are reduced by keeping everything inside a single cloud vendor, which we know is simply lock-in and often not part of a CIO's cloud strategy or risk prevention.

The second only keeps data in the cloud that applications collect and transports out the minimum down to on premise storage. This creates a carefully considered strategy of only deploying data minimalistic applications in a cloud.

The last example is where data is cached in the cloud with applications and storage of that data, or the one truth, is stored on premise. This means analytics, AI and machine learning can be run on premise without having to upload to cloud providers and then back again after processing. The cached data is based only on application needs and can even be cached across multicloud deployments. 

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol case study is available online and discusses their data, cloud and deployment strategies across a hybrid multicloud environment.

Data dangers

Most companies realize all to well that their data is their proprietary advantage in their market. It's their intellectual capital at the end of the day and something they've thought very carefully about in regards to where it's going to be stored.

Imagine this scenario if you will.

You’re a retailer, one of the top ten worldwide. You've been planning your cloud strategy for some time now and have landed on making use of a public cloud service. All of a sudden, your provider expands with an acquisition of a big competitor in your market.

Overnight your upcoming cloud provider has grown to 50% of your retail size. Do you trust their cloud with your retail data? What do you do if you already have your data in their cloud? Did your cloud planning start with having an exit-strategy?

Pitfalls shared, pitfalls avoided

Sharing just a few of the pitfalls we have seen in our travels should help your company plan for a safer, more secure and persistent cloud strategy. Understanding that cost is not the obvious motivator, that not everything needs or should be put in the cloud, and managing your data effectively in the cloud are all key factors to ensuring success.

Missing the start of this series? Just head on back and catch up with part 1.