Mul­ticloud

Without cloud computing, work in many companies would be hardly ima­gin­able nowadays. Private users are also in­creas­ingly out­sourcing services to the cloud. The benefits are obvious: you not only save the costs of main­ten­ance, memory and computing power, but also ensure that important data isn’t lost if things go wrong. To fulfil the different re­quire­ments on per­form­ance and data security of certain services, various cloud services can be combined in a mul­ticloud en­vir­on­ment.

The reason for this approach is that cloud services from various providers can address different ap­plic­a­tion needs. While solution A may offer plenty of storage space and fast computing power, solution B may be prefer­able in terms of data security. With a mul­ticloud strategy, you don’t need to choose just one of the two options – instead, you can use the most suitable cloud for each in­di­vidu­al task and manage all the services in one or­gan­isa­tion structure.

Not only can this flex­ib­il­ity have a positive effect on computing power, but it can also minimise the risk of (com­mer­cial) damages as a result of server outages or data loss. However, the services need to be co­ordin­ated with com­pre­hens­ive mul­ticloud man­age­ment to prevent ap­plic­a­tions or some of their functions from blocking each other. It’s important to ensure at all times that the exchange of in­form­a­tion and data between the various cloud platforms occurs smoothly.

To what extent the various cloud services are to be used is not firmly defined. In fact, any private user who has both a Google account and a Microsoft account is already working with a mul­ticloud. But this practice doesn’t merely refer to the everyday use of the Internet of Things.

The mul­ticloud concept is pre­dom­in­antly aimed at users who operate internal or external cloud services and wish to expand the func­tion­al range with certain com­pon­ents, which the re­spect­ive provider doesn’t offer or which can’t be easily im­ple­men­ted through in-house solution. Due to the re­l­at­ively complex con­fig­ur­a­tion and man­age­ment of a mul­ticloud ar­chi­tec­ture, it is typically suitable for companies that have already set up and manage their internal IT in­fra­struc­ture suc­cess­fully.

If these con­di­tions are met, there are numerous reasons to switch to a mul­ticloud:

• Op­tim­iz­a­tion of IT in­fra­struc­ture: You can use the ad­vant­ages of various cloud providers and thereby optimise computing power, storage space and the main­ten­ance costs of your IT in­fra­struc­ture.
• Optimal software support: If you use multiple services that are tailored to the systems of different providers (such as apps optimised for Amazon, Google or Microsoft systems), a mul­ticloud offers you the ability to run each of them under ideal con­di­tions.
• Data security: If you work with sensitive data, you can manage it sep­ar­ately from other processes on servers that meet your needs in terms of security.
• Pre­ven­tion of emergency situ­ations: By dis­trib­ut­ing data and processes across multiple clouds, there is a lower risk that your company will lose data or be unable to operate in the event of a server outage.

The ex­plan­a­tions above have already high­lighted some of the pros and cons of mul­ticlouds. For a better overview, here’s a summary of the most important points: