The Enterprise is Changing Due to Hybrid Multi-Cloud Solutions
Do you know where your organization stands in terms of digital transformation? Each enterprise, every industry, and every migration is unique, but they all rely on a cloud strategy that meets the needs of the business, the appetite for risk, and the trust in the benefits of cloud migration. Nonetheless, the fact is that there are several common challenges involved in an effective digital transformation in every case.
Transformation in the modern era typically requires a hybrid multi-cloud strategy (HMC) with a mix of private and public cloud deployments to provide the best in services, security, and reliability, minimizing the risk of downtime, data loss, and unnecessary costs. With SaaS and PaaS solutions thrown in, you can see how complex managing and optimizing the HMC solution can be.
The Flexera ‘State of the Cloud’ report shows that 92% of enterprises surveyed are using multicloud strategies, and 82% are also using hybrid approaches.
Cloud migration brings real benefits to your business, including scalability, feature selection, off-loading capital expenditures, global reach, and more. Planning, preparation, and implementation are necessary, however, to realize those benefits. This may explain why 60% of enterprises report that cloud migration projects have failed or are very difficult.
What are the most likely challenges that enterprises will face during the Digital Transformation process? We can rely on business experiences that have documented the needs of enterprises. Some crucial issues consistently rank high or close to it for 70-90% of organizations:
- Performance
- Cost
- Security
- Expertise
The good news is that any enterprise can use the edge to overcome these challenges.
Problems related to performance
Cloud migration may bring businesses many benefits, but if they experience performance problems with their application and workload, they won’t matter very much. Performance can be affected at many points in the cloud infrastructure, from the network to the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) to the third parties providing XaaS services to the enterprise.
In terms of connectivity, the edge can provide numerous solutions that can simplify and accelerate the cloud access process:
- Proximity is a key benefit of edge data centers, which bring the cloud closer to enterprises and enterprises closer to their customers.
- Using Direct Cloud Access, an end-to-end connection can be established between an edge data center and a single CSP that is more secure and faster than using the public Internet.
- Software-defined networking gives enterprises the ability to access many cloud service providers with one network solution, using the right provider according to workloads while deploying a multicloud strategy.
- As a result, XaaS Solutions at the Edge can help cloud performance by bringing key applications into edge data centers where their volumes, variety, and velocity can be addressed before traversing the network to reach the appropriate availability zones and cloud services.
You can compare the top 15 SD-WAN Companies solutions & IT Vendors to determine which one is best for your business.
It’s a cost issue
There have been many recent news reports highlighting the sticker shock many enterprises experience after migrating to the cloud. Network expenses that can be incurred by sending massive amounts of data between an enterprise and a CSP are one significant contributor to these costs. 90% of the cloud costs incurred by enterprises are accounted for by the cost of using public Internet networks. By connecting directly to the nearest edge data center (EDC) and bypassing the public Internet with a direct or SDN-based cloud on-ramp connection, enterprises can realize material savings. By using this approach, enterprises can prevent surprises when their invoices come in each month.
This situation calls for security
Any enterprise looking for more effective ways to use the cloud needs to be cognizant of this. Do they have to make compromises with regards to their security posture when so much critical business data passes from their own servers to platforms in the cloud? A data center at the edge can address this issue in multiple stages:
There may be advantages to colocating services close to an enterprise’s office than establishing a core data center at a point of Internet connection that is probably some distance away. By doing this, the amount of network traffic is reduced and access to enterprise servers can be secured in an as-needed manner.
Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, enterprise traffic between the cloud and an edge data center is more secure and less susceptible to disruption with the use of a direct or an SDN on-ramp originating from the data center.
We’ve seen above that these edge offerings can provide some benefits, though none are more significant than security and peace of mind.
Expertise is needed in this case
As per Gartner, “until 2022, cloud-based infrastructure as a service skill will delay half of enterprise IT organizations’ cloud migration by at least two years.”
IT organizations can spend up to 70% of their time maintaining existing systems rather than planning and implementing the next generation of applications and platforms, according to other analysts. In what areas of expertise is there such a shortage?
- Cloud platform expertise
- Security expertise
- Cloud design / architecture
- Cloud orchestration and management
- Cloud server and storage administration
Where does an enterprise go for guidance and resources regarding these issues? A good place to start is the edge. Multicloud hybrid ecosystems consist of several services and solutions including:
Managed Service Providers, Security Solutions, Cloud Storage, Monitoring, Analytics, as well as more.
Having this type of ecosystem available in a data center allows enterprises to concentrate on their core business while knowing that resources with experience and a track record can be found in one location and work together to execute almost any hybrid multi-cloud strategy.
Final Words:
Together, the edge provides a comprehensive, practical, proven set of solutions for enterprises embarking on a cloud-based business transformation.
