How to Manage the Complexity of Multi-Cloud Environments

There is a way to manage the complexity of multi-cloud environments.

Most companies have adopted hybrid and distributed cloud environments as they have moved their applications and data to the cloud. A new Harvard Business Review–Analytic Services survey shows that 85% of respondents say their organizations use at least two clouds.

Many enterprises moved to the cloud to speed up innovation, agility, and growth, and to realize cost savings with the cloud's on-demand consumption model. Multi-cloud operations and cloud costs are out of control, but some find themselves grappling with it.

Managing the increasing complexity and run costs of these hybrid, distributed cloud environments is a priority for enterprises. To keep up with growing customer expectations, they want to reduce the complexity of CloudOps.

Not all organizations are able to achieve these goals.

Some organizations use cloud services inconsistently, running the risk of spending too much on unneeded services, missing opportunities to maximize performance, and seeing gaps in managing and securing customer data. Only 27% of the respondents to the survey have created a cloud center for excellence to coordinate and share best practices.

There is a way forward.

Engineering-led operations give organizations advantages that refine their cloud-workload management strategies.

New approaches to information technology operations enhance automation and simplify complexity. Implementation of security, operations, and reliability engineering practices into how you design, build, deploy, and operate your applications for the cloud is required. It requires the right skills and policies in place, as well as a cultural shift in how applications for the cloud are developed.

Without a consistent means to determine where, when, and how to run their cloud workload, organizations may find it difficult to capture all the benefits they anticipate from their cloud investments. By placing CloudOps and cloud financial operations at the center of business strategy, an organization can more fully realize the potential of its cloud investments through increased agility and efficiency, lower costs, and advanced data protection.

Modern cloudOps and finOps strategies can help all functions share and collaborate on insights, boost agility and efficiency, coordinate spending, and secure company and customer data

There are cloud operations for coordinated cloud management.

It's important to balance technology with business strategy when managing multiple public and internal cloud environments.

Organizations participating in the survey that have yet to fully adopt CloudOps say they are working to overcome such cloud-management challenges as hiring for the skills they need, enforce standards and practices as they upgrade, improve security, and govern data consistently. When asked to choose from a list of challenges they face in managing their clouds, 51 percent said they had difficulty keeping up with the technology skills required.

A critical step in managing multiple clouds is coordinating and focusing on the organization's overarching goals, such as operational efficiency, cutting expenses, and speeding up digital transformation.

Digital transformation can be accelerated when organizations can coordinate their cloud management and free up their IT resources and talent from dealing with the daily challenges of managing cloud complexity.

There are finOps for cloud cost management.

Cloud computing is the cornerstone of innovation for many organizations because of its ability to drive business agility and high-velocity decision making. Cloud investments can become a runaway train if proper checks and balances are not in place.

More than half of the respondents say their organizations have coordinated their approaches to streamline their spending.

In order to increase financial accountability on cloud investments, a cross-functional collaboration of technology, operations, and finance teams is required. The goal of this collaboration is to improve processes, reduce risks, and deliver offerings faster.

To build a cloud center of excellence, a cross-functional team of finance leaders, engineers, and dedicated FinOps practitioners must be put together.

A culture change, shifting technology leadership's traditional responsibility to make all purchasing decisions and sharing investment decisions to ensure coordination on business strategy are some of the things that may need to be done to establish a finOps practice. It requires developers to consider more cost related matters, such as the impact a product enhancement or modification might have on cloud investment

As cloud consumption models become more complex and data-rich, the opportunities for finOps to enhance the quality of cloud consumption will only increase. Establishing a center of excellence will allow an organization to make more balanced cloud investments and strengthen the business by reallocating cloud spend in a fast-paced digital world.

Learn how you can use CloudOps to refine your strategy.