Multi-cloud strategies allow organizations to use multiple cloud providers to gain various benefits like choosing the best cloud for each workload, cost savings, and redundancy. A multi-cloud strategy involves selecting clouds deliberately based on needs rather than using them haphazardly. It requires addressing challenges like management complexity, security, and interoperability. Planning is key to avoiding issues and achieving business goals through a multi-cloud approach.

1. Multi-Cloud Strategy for Unrestricted Possibilities
Harsh Vardhan Sehgal

2. 1
2
4
5
3
Overview
Motivation for Multi-cloud
Interesting multi-cloud Use-cases
Addressing challenges
Migration
Multi-Cloud
Strategy

3. Overview
Multi-cloud
92%
Single Public
7%
Single Private 82%
10% Multiple
public
Hybrid
cloud
Source: Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report
Enterprise Cloud Strategy
There is no convincing required to agree that Cloud is an essential irresistible technology and serves not only as an ultimate solution
to access IT software & systems but also as an essential catalyst for Enterprise Organizations in their Digital Transformation journey.
The Challenging part is to select the right Cloud Platform in the absence of a common framework for assessing Cloud Service
Providers (CSPs), combined with the fact that no two CSPs are the same, complicates the process of selecting one that’s right for
your organization.
There seems to be a better approach focused on cherry-picking of services from multiple CSPs rather then restricting to a particular
Platform. According to Gartner, 81% of organizations are working with two or more public cloud providers. A multi-cloud strategy
gives companies the freedom to use the best possible cloud for each workload.
Multi-Cloud strategy is definitely the approach to be pursued for unrestricted possibilities however it requires careful assessment
and planning to ensure that the Enterprise Organizations avoid the common pitfalls and setbacks in order to achieve their business
objectives. This document highlight the benefits of Multi-cloud strategy and its value to the Enterprise Organizations along with key
considerations to avoid risk.
Number of clouds

4. What is a Multi-Cloud Strategy ?
A multi-cloud strategy is the intention and implementation of multi-cloud. It’s choosing to be in the multi-cloud on purpose—not by default.
For instance, many companies first move into the cloud tepidly, one small service or application at a time. Soon, this becomes unwieldy and you have to
clean up your cloud sprawl. You need a strategy.
Strategizing for the multi-cloud, means reflecting on what your needs are and what vendor aligns with them best.
• Option to choose best cloud-hosting providers for each individual task e.g. one cloud
provider based on its high upload speed while another provider for better SLA
• Freedom of comparing different providers and securing the best available rates based on
you specific IT needs
• Achieve complete agility and workload mobility between heterogeneous cloud platforms,
storage and hypervisors
• Redundant backup and recovery capabilities
• Higher scalability for business to scale the resources based on an ongoing demand
• Leverage proximity & fast, low-latency connections for improved application response time
• Ability to quickly switch to another cloud service provider in case of infrastructure
meltdown or an attack
Benefits of Multi-Cloud approach Business Value
• Avail best of the breed IT solution & services
• More options for specific business need
• No Vendor Lock-in
• Better/Discounted Rates
• Payment flexibility
• Improved Agility & Business continuity
• Customizable capacity
• Improved application response time
• Enhanced user experience
• Promotes innovation

5. When Multi-Cloud is the only option
Multi-Vendor/Regulatory policy to avoid lock-in and mandating the Enterprise
to render services of more than just one Cloud platform.
Enterprise using cloud services in multiple geographies may not have choice to
choose a particular cloud platform in a region.
Disaster Recovery requirement to host on a different platform.
Unavailability of a particular service or solution on the primary cloud platform.
Budget constraints.

6. Interesting multi-cloud use-cases
• Multi-cloud based DDI ( DNS, DHCP and IP Management) solutions brings the DDI services closer to the users distributed
across the globe by providing localized services for enhanced user experience while still maintaining uniform access security.
• Use of multi-cloud containers to spread workloads across multiple cloud vendors giving enterprises flexibility to use (or stop
using) a cloud whenever they want.
• Multi-cloud storage service that allows businesses to jump between Hyper-scalers like AWS, Azure and GCP and avoid vendor
lock-in , powered by Nimble storage which also guarantees six nines (99.9999%) availability and data durability which is much
higher than cloud native storage services starting at just $0.10 per GB, per month.
• The multi-cloud provides hosting of critical databases like SQL, MongoDB, and MySQL in a cloud with added redundancy. This
ensures that the data is still available if anything goes wrong with the Cloud. In addition, organizations can use multi-cloud
because clustering can be done to add shared access to the Cloud where this data is being stored.
• Multi-cloud SD-WAN services by vendors like Fortinet and Colt to leverage the Infrastructure on any cloud platform to provide
SD-WAN access.

7. Addressing challenges of a multi-cloud approach
Management complexity : Multiplying cloud vendors means multiplying the
management burden due to lack of standardization across public cloud vendors.
Cross-platform Competence: Demand for talent needed to managing multi-
cloud environments is high, but the supply is scarce. Enterprises often find it
difficult to keep the right personnel in-house to manage a multi-cloud
environment.
Cost Control: The ability to quickly deploy applications in cloud environment of
choice may also lead to sprawl when an organization loses track of where its
applications are hosted or when applications are not being run efficiently.
Governance & Compliance: Governance & compliances issues (such as HIPAA,
PCI DSS, FISMA and SOX) must be addressed for each cloud environment.
Security: Although public cloud platforms have their own strong security
architecture and protocols, enterprises are ultimately responsible for the
security of their data in all of their platforms including data is transit and at rest.
Interoperability: Dealing with siloed vendor tools, consolidated monitoring
across cloud environments, as well as other interoperability challenges resulting
in administrative burden and increased expenses.
Leverage Multi-cloud management tools e.g. IBM, Cisco &
VMware
Enforce Blueprints & Templating for infrastructure & service
rollout, leverage automation, agnostic tools and managed
service providers.
Establish a center of cloud excellence (CCE), Create a cloud
cost plan, enforce intelligent cloud expense evaluation
process, Tiering and classification, Utilize evaluation tools and
deploy continuous monitoring with alarms.
Adopt a declarative approach by automating the efforts of
enforcing compliance across multi-cloud environments.
Centralize accounts, roles & policy management while
decouple authentication and authorization from any particular
cloud. Automate software upgrades and patches. Synchronize
Policies and consolidate monitoring.
Use right level of stickiness, Consider using published adapters
to port applications across platforms, Use open cloud
standards.

8. Framework for leveraging multi-cloud
Business Goals
Cloud
Readiness
Assessment
Multi-Cloud
Requirements
Architecture
Design
Organizational
Framework
Multi-Cloud
Roadmap
- Identify, understand
& define key business
goals
- Workshop with
stakeholders to
define precise goals
and priorities
- Access current
application landscape
to select appropriate
migration strategy
usually defined by 6
R’s.
- 6 R’s: Rehost, Re-
platform, Refactor,
Retain, Retire and
Repurchase.
- Define technical
requirements that
the cloud platform
need to fulfill.
- Map these technical
requirements back to
the business goals.
- Create a formal
architecture design
document using
enterprise architecture
frameworks like
Zachman framework.
- Access and define
organization’s current
state, the target state
and the transition
required to achieve the
target state.
- Adopt service oriented
framework which is
customer focused, Cross
functional & multi-skilled
teams, Proactive
operations, Light weight
processes & governance
and basic automation
- Define a execution
roadmap providing
an overview of the
cloud/multi-cloud
journey to the
enterprise.
- Create detailed
project plans for
execution.

9. Conclusion
Most multi-cloud strategies to date are no strategies but more of an ad-hoc response to the technical
advancements and reactive in nature, responding to increased workloads and functionalities.
Multi-cloud may have opened new venues of opportunities but also an entangled mess of issues most of which
come as surprises with devastating potential, and like any race horse with potential to be a champion there is a
need of careful taming and an expert jockey to win a race. Multi-cloud adoption requires a well defined strategy
to succeed.

10. Please feel free to contact Harsh Vardhan Sehgal (+91 8826298731) for more use cases and
further discussion on the topic.
Thank You !