Why One CTO Says Hybrid Multi-Cloud Strategies Are Increasingly Vital
Accelerating the adoption of multi-cloud strategies is a long-term trend, due to the exponential increase in the amount of data being generated and collected. As companies turn to build and adopting a multi-cloud strategy, there is growing attention on trying to better understand software and infrastructure costs. Let us help.
According to a 2019 Gartner survey, 81% of public cloud users were working with two or more cloud providers before the pandemic. A multi-cloud approach allows users to take advantage of best-of-breed services and ensure better quality, resiliency, and cost control during ordinary times. During the Covid-19 crisis, the move toward hybrid multi-cloud architectures has dramatically accelerated.
Forbes Technology Council member Chris Sharp is CTO and Executive Vice President of Service Innovation at Digital Realty, a San Francisco-based information technology company powering IT strategies for startups and large multinational organizations around the world. He said the technical challenges IT teams are facing during the pandemic – saturated public internet, changing traffic patterns, spikes in demand – are driving enterprises to bolster their interconnection to other data centers and public clouds in order to shore up infrastructure.
Over the past 20 years, Sharp has counseled on the evolution of cloud – from the initial adoption of private cloud to the boom in large public cloud providers and now the evolution to hybrid and multi-cloud. At Digital Realty, he’s delivering technical innovation for customers’ full spectrum of data center requirements while providing a trusted foundation for digital businesses around the world.
Recently, his team played a large role in creating PlatformDIGITAL™, an innovative data center platform designed to help customers scale digital business with fit-for-purpose infrastructure using blueprints based on thousands of successfully implemented designs. “Our work with customers across 275 facilities on six continents gives us a front-row seat to how these companies are taking advantage of emerging technologies, ranging from machine learning and AI to the Internet of Things,” Sharp said.
Another longer-term trend is accelerating the adoption of multi-cloud strategies: the exponential increase in the amount of data being generated and collected. “As data accumulates and is pulled into central places to be used and analyzed, services and applications are drawn closer to the data,” Sharp said. “This ‘data gravity’ makes data almost impossible to move on a large scale, which causes complexity and challenges for regulatory compliance, privacy and simply meeting customer expectations of service at the click of a button.”
Hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures support fast, reliable, and secure data movement and processing to help organizations escape data gravity. Partnered with some of the biggest cloud providers, such as AWS, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, and IBM, Digital Realty provides comprehensive hybrid solutions through global multi-cloud access and partner support. “For nearly 20 years, Digital Realty has been a key provider for companies that need to move workloads off-premises, connect to multiple data centers or clouds, or ensure resiliency to hybrid cloud deployments,” Sharp said.
For companies wrestling with the complexity of hybrid cloud adoption, Digital Realty’s Service Exchange, powered by Megaport, removes complexity in deploying these solutions. Using software-defined networking (SDN) technologies, the Service Exchange allows enterprises to quickly and securely connect to each other as well as cloud service providers and other data centers around the world. Service Exchange currently includes over 60 Digital Realty facilities, offering over 130 cloud on-ramps with the eight largest cloud service providers and reaching over 500 data centers globally.
Digital Realty has grown substantially by helping customers implement hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure strategies. Sharp said the company more than quadrupled its market cap in just the past five years. “After our combination with Interxion earlier this year – which expanded our footprint in Europe substantially – we serve a combined 4,000 customers through 275 data centers in over 44 metro areas in 20 countries on six continents,” he said.
Sharp recommends companies reevaluate their infrastructure needs to make sure they’re able to meet their digital transformation goals without cutting corners. This is especially important for companies that continue to manage largely remote workforces and growing digital service needs. The key to achieving a customized IT environment is being able to discern between high-security data that should be kept in a private cloud and other data suitable for public clouds.
Effective hybrid cloud strategies also allow organizations to adjust their computing capacity to pay only for what they use on-demand. Configuring multi-cloud environments with a tool to manage everything in one place will also optimize performance – saving time, money, and hassle in the long run. According to Sharp, having flexible network architecture is critical. “An SDN allows you to flex your network in the same manner that you're flexing your computing and storage power through hybrid cloud deployments.”
Ultimately, Sharp said now is the time to consider a multi-cloud approach. “The changes we’re navigating right now will have long-term effects on how companies operate and how people interact with technology. Now is the time to make important investments for the long term.” By building flexible and scalable infrastructure, companies can navigate the current crisis and prepare for unforeseeable events on the horizon. Said Sharp, “Interconnection to other facilities, clouds, and a partner ecosystem is more vital now than ever.”
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