6 benefits your multicloud strategy must deliver

There are many upsides to a multicloud strategy. And although some may hold more appeal than others, it’s likely that the cumulative benefits will meet the demands of your organization.

These are the six benefits that our Multicloud as a Service clients value.

1. Remaining agile to adapt to changing needs

Your organization’s technical needs change over time. A well-defined multicloud strategy means you’re well placed to manage capacity in a dynamic and agile way – eliminating underresourced workloads and underused storage and computing resources.

To achieve this, it’s essential to first have a good understanding of your overall cloud estate. From there, you can determine the expertise needed to manage different platforms – and potentially architectures – with integration across the board. Naturally, you need to ensure that you maintain cloud security and compliance, with effective risk management in place across all environments.

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2. Accessing multiple vendors for the best solution

When you adopt a multicloud strategy, you can go beyond a single vendor to opt for solutions from any provider to meet your technology and business goals. This makes it easier to meet important criteria, such as pricing and performance, and to make changes rapidly when necessary.

3. Saving costs thanks to flexibility and choice

Once you have moved beyond using a single cloud provider, you are more likely to realize considerable cost savings. You have greater flexibility in choosing when and where to source additional capacity for your workloads and, with an array of options to consider, you have more opportunities to benefit from keener pricing.

That said, cloud servers are not a commodity product. There will always be different features and benefits to consider, along with reasons why you might wish to extend your use of a specific service, consolidate two or more services, or begin anew. For effective cost control, you will need a firm understanding of the financial model of each service you are evaluating or already using.

4. Switching it up for better performance

Again, a multicloud environment – if managed properly – lends itself to continual improvements in application and workload performance because you have more flexibility to switch between different cloud providers and setups.

It’s worth noting, however, that this can be a complex task involving continual analytics processing that leads to actionable outcomes, and even incorporating AIOps into your organization.

5. Avoiding vendor lock-in

Another benefit of a multicloud strategy is what you say goodbye to: the risk of vendor lock-in. You don’t want to be so dependent on a particular cloud provider that you cannot easily switch to another without experiencing major disruptions or incurring significant costs.

Such a dependency can come about through contracts, proprietary technology or the level – or lack – of expertise you have with other vendors. The less easily you can move workloads to another cloud environment, the less leverage you will have in negotiations with your existing provider.

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6. Working with a multicloud-as-a-service provider

While the benefits of a multicloud strategy are clear, there is no immediate guarantee of success: it’s not a “one and done” operation. A well-defined multicloud strategy will set you on the right course, but you’ll need the expertise and technical know-how to ensure you don’t encounter operational or financial issues as you proceed.

Working with multiple clouds can be an opportunity to extend your team’s knowledge of capacity management, workload planning and different architectures. However, whether it’s during the initial integration or the day-to-day planning and execution, you’ll need agility and flexibility while controlling costs, maximizing performance and maintaining security without negating the benefits you hope to gain.

Working with a third-party multicloud-as-a-service provider, such as NTT, is a way to access that support and expertise. Our Managed Cloud Services can help you realize all the benefits of a cloud strategy and navigate your multicloud estate so you can define, deploy and manage the best combination of cloud solutions for your business.

How advanced is your cloud strategy? Take our cloud maturity assessment to find out.

Amit Gandhi is Vice-President: Marketing, Managed Cloud and Infrastructure Services at NTT