The 4 Pitfalls of Multi-Cloud... and How to Avoid Them

Multi-cloud is rapidly gaining popularity as a solution for large enterprises. A recent IDC report showed that 80% of large enterprises expect to adopt a multi-cloud strategy within the next three years. However, executing a successful multi-cloud strategy requires avoiding common pitfalls that can lead to spiralling costs, security headaches, and slow business growth. In this technical blog post, we'll delve into the four common pitfalls of multi-cloud and explore how to overcome them.

• Organisational Silos: One of the major pitfalls of multi-cloud is the creation of silos within an organisation. This occurs when different practices are established for each cloud, leading to a hindrance in business growth and high investments in engineering. To overcome this, organisations must establish cloud-agnostic standards and governance that can be applied across all clouds. This ensures a consistent approach to cloud management, reducing the risk of silos and improving operational efficiency.

• Old-School Networking: Another common pitfall of multi-cloud is the reliance on outdated security practices. Single-sourced infrastructure that relies on the security zone paradigm from the 90s can hinder business agility and increase the risk of security breaches. To overcome this, organisations must adopt modern security practices that can adapt to the dynamic nature of multi-cloud. This includes the use of micro-segmentation, network security as code, and zero-trust security models.

• Ignoring Portability: Tightly-coupling assets to a single cloud negates the benefits of multi-cloud and increases costs. To overcome this, organisations must embrace cloud-agnostic design patterns and ensure that their assets are portable and flexible to changing business requirements. This requires the use of containerization and the implementation of infrastructure as code (IaC) practices. By automating infrastructure deployment and management, organisations can reduce the time and cost of moving applications between clouds.

• Immutable CI/CD: Continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) are crucial functions in multi-cloud. However, moving to multi-cloud highlights the need for flexible deployment practices that can adapt to a dynamic cloud landscape. To overcome this, organisations must adopt immutable CI/CD practices, such as using containerization and blue-green deployments, to ensure that applications can be deployed seamlessly and reliably in any cloud environment.

It's time to move on

Navigating multi-cloud requires avoiding these four common pitfalls and embracing cloud-agnostic practices. By establishing cloud-agnostic standards and governance, adopting modern security practices, embracing cloud-agnostic design patterns, and implementing immutable CI/CD practices, organisations can ensure that their multi-cloud strategy is successful and delivers improved operational resilience, better customer experience, and business outcomes. Ori provides a no-code platform for multi-cloud provisioning and application orchestration, enabling organizations to deploy platforms or applications on any public or private cloud, create application-specific networking, and respond dynamically to external events. Learn more about Ori at ori.co.