The clamor for enterprises to benefit from the growing capabilities of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has led industry experts to project a significant increase of investment in cloud computing.

Gartner forecasts worldwide public cloud end-user spending to surpass $675.4 billion (£531.6bn) this year, with end-user spending on public cloud services projected to see a 20.4% increase, up from about £441.6bn. This growth is primarily attributed to advancements in GenAI and the modernization of applications.

Many firms that are looking to adopt GenAI at scale are opting for a multicloud strategy. This allows a customer to mix and match the cloud services that most closely meet their needs, including access to the best quality products, building resilience into cloud architecture and strengthening the negotiation position with providers.

Organizations pursuing a multicloud strategy need to consider a few key points to ensure a reliable, secure and scalable build.

Aligning the cloud with organizational needs

Cloud diversity benefits IT departments by offering a variety of choices to meet specific needs. For example, some firms elect to keep security-focused workloads in the more capital intensive private cloud, while running regular business data and apps in cost-effective public cloud networks. Hybrid clouds are suitable for when a high level of flexibility and agility is needed. For example, when sensitive, mission-critical IP in the private cloud needs to break onto the public cloud at short notice for extra capacity or when costs need to be reduced.

In addition to this, a multi-cloud approach empowers organizations to match workloads with the most advanced technology available at the time. GenAI is a rapidly-evolving technological development which serves as a key example of a developing technology that companies are keen to utilize. Yet, harnessing LLMs securely, effectively and efficiently within the enterprise necessitates a comprehensive revaluation of organizations' IT infrastructure and cloud strategies. With new technologies only continuing to advance, a sound multicloud strategy will be essential to reap the benefits that these new tools will offer. In the context of the multi-cloud, this means enabling customers to test and develop different providers and understand which best match their requirements.

When creating your multi-cloud strategy, evaluate your company's culture, DevOps practices, and technology stack. Then agree on clear, measurable objectives which align with your wider business objectives such as optimizing costs. This thorough assessment will shape your multi-cloud management plan, forming a robust, long-term blueprint for digital empowerment that integrates the essential components of people, processes, and technology.

Ensuring data security

Another common goal is to enhance organizational resilience, ensuring systems remain available during a major incident or disaster. By distributing workloads across multiple cloud regions or providers, you can minimize downtime and ensure business continuity. And while adopting multi-cloud can expose an organization to a wider attack surface, the risk of significant damage can be reduced by implementing consistent security policies and compliance measures across all cloud environments, with measures including encryption, identity and access management (IAM), and security monitoring tools. If the worst happens, any data breach only affects a limited amount of data as data and applications can be separated across different services.

The hyperscalers are regularly issuing new security solutions designed to protect data, applications, and other workloads. For example, Google Workspace recently announced that it is proactively enhancing the security of its platform by mandating Google two-step verification (2SV) for all Super Admin accounts. This secondary factor could be a security key, a Google Authenticator prompt, or the reception of a verification code through a phone call or text message.

Successful workload migration

Moving workloads to the cloud or between cloud platforms can be challenging. A crucial aspect of the planning stage is deciding what to migrate. This requires a comprehensive application assessment to identify which workloads would deliver greater business value if moved to the cloud or a different cloud environment. While public-facing applications with a global reach are good candidates for the public cloud, others may require an ROI analysis to determine if the scalability of the public cloud will add value.

During the planning stage, many companies discover an expertise gap in their team that can present challenges during migration. Partner companies can help to train and align strategic goals across engineering teams to ensure you achieve your migration goals.

The danger of vendor lock-in

No matter whether it’s your mobile phone firm, utility company or mortgage provider, being forced to continue to use the same organization can prove costly. The same is true in cloud computing – companies can find it difficult to move suppliers without incurring significant costs, legal headaches or technological incompatibilities.

A multi-cloud approach reduces your dependence on any single vendor and largely allows you to operate on your terms. For instance, major cloud providers offer pay-as-you-go pricing, meaning you can theoretically shut down your environment, export your data and virtual machines, and walk away whenever you choose. You also have the option of using a range of open-source cloud computing platforms and tools, reducing your dependence on proprietary platforms. Open-source technology effectively separates your technology decisions from your choice of cloud vendor – developers can modify the source code to meet their specific needs as they deploy, provision, and manage workloads.

While multi-cloud offers a wealth of benefits, from flexibility and best-of-breed products to enhanced resilience and cost optimization, these benefits are only realized through careful planning and optimized architecture. Legacy IT systems, on-premise infrastructure and outdated hardware can all hinder an organization's ability to manage multi-cloud operations independently. Partnering with a vendor-neutral managed service provider (MSP) can help identify the optimal mix of infrastructure, solutions, and providers. With the right expertise, your business can achieve complete agility and workload mobility.

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