Insights

There is a real buzz in the air around multi-cloud strategies. It is featured as a benefit in a number of IT publications and according to Michael Warrilow, VP Analyst at Gartner, most organisations adopt a multi-cloud strategy out of desire to avoid vendor lock-in or to take advantage of best-of-breed solutions. According to Flexera’s 2022 State of the Cloud Report more than a third of enterprises (37%) report annual spending on cloud computing exceeding $12 million. The way enterprises are approaching multi-cloud environments is evolving but what exactly is a multi-cloud strategy?

Multi-cloud strategy

A multi-cloud strategy is seen by most CIOs and Senior Executives as a key enabler for driving their digital strategy forward. They see it as providing great flexibility, agility, faster time-to-market, and steering innovation.

A multi-cloud strategy is often driven by business or technical goals. These can include more price-competitive cloud services, cloud reliability, or taking advantage of the speed, capacity, or features offered by particular cloud providers.

Gartner mentions 3 main drivers for the move to multi-cloud:

• Procurement looks for the best deals between providers
• Architects look for modularisation
• Governance looks for standard processes

However, many organisations have received some rather unexpected ‘surprises’ in their OPEX expenditure and a multi-cloud strategy does not come without its challenges. Mixing multiple services, cloud providers, and cloud environments can quickly complicate architecture design and dependencies.

We are not suggesting that a multi-cloud strategy is a mistake, however all of these motivations add complexity rather than value. Multi-cloud can bring a string of challenges such as:

• Difficulty in managing cost

Initially, you will be able to gain some commercial tension, however by some estimations, as much as one-third of cloud spending is wasted because it is difficult to determine not only where expenditures are going, but also what value, if any, your organisation is getting. In addition, the almost “self-service” ability to quickly deploy your own applications in your cloud environment of choice, can be one sure way of losing track of where your applications are hosted or when they are not being run efficiently. It is very easy to rack up thousands of pounds of extra cloud spend, and you may not even know where that money is being spent.

• Talent

Different clouds provide different benefits but the key to getting maximum value from multiple clouds largely comes down to how effectively a company is able to manage an increasingly complex application portfolio and infrastructure. Having a team in place that is not adequately trained in multi-cloud can come at a steep cost, as your team will not understand how to create cost-effective architecture in a multi-cloud environment. Some organisations have had to turn to a managed service provider with multi-cloud experience to fill the gap - adding to your already rocketing cloud costs.

• Overall management

The more cloud environments your organisation uses, the more complex the management of those clouds become. The problem, more often than not, lies in the diversity among cloud vendors. Each public cloud vendor has its own portal, its own APIs, and its own unique processes for managing the environment. Not having any standardisation across public cloud vendors, means multiplying the management element.

Our view on this – get one cloud right before looking at a multi-cloud approach. Take instead a deep dive into your existing cloud performance by testing and analysing your entire estate. Doing a deep dive into end-to-end performance with a mindset that “great performance reduces cost” will bend the line downwards and deliver savings along with conventional FinOps levers. More importantly, build a more resilient and scalable platform for the future.

The more cloud environments your organisation uses, the more complex the management of those clouds become. The problem, more often than not, lies in the diversity among cloud vendors. Each public cloud vendor has its own portal, its own APIs, and its own unique processes for managing the environment. Without having any standardisation across public cloud vendors, means multiplying the management element.

In a recent engagement with Cegid (A global leading provider of cloud business management solutions for finance, human recourses, CPA’s, retail, and entrepreneurial sectors) Capacitas were asked to perform a performance audit of Cegid’s complex estate to give an independent assessment of whether more value could be achieved as part of their growth plans.

Following the audit, we were able to make some key recommendations in terms of a detailed strategy to manage and enhance performance, and indeed around the cost savings Cegid could achieve. The Cegid team embarked on an ambitious 1-year programme to start delivering the recommended cloud strategies. As the actions and recommendations started rolling into production and the benefits were realised, this created a virtuous circle. By the end of the first few months the optimisations accelerated which also created a real positive energy within the Cegid teams.

The results for Cegid speaks for themselves. Savings of €6M per annum and a 27% growth in business with no overall increase in cloud infrastructure. 

This had dual benefits for Cegid in not only releasing investment for people, but also reducing Cegid’s carbon footprints. We successfully managed to change their mindset to “Use what you need. Don’t overconsume”. This change in mindset and culture could also be seen at the programme level, as the Cegid teams worked in a more productive and outcome led way. This allowed Cegid to renegotiate contracts with the cloud service provider in a way that was more aligned to their long-term goals and plans.