Article How Cross-Cloud Simplicity Beats Multi-Cloud Complexity for MSPs
By Insight UK / 25 Aug 2022 / Topics: Hybrid cloud
By Insight UK / 25 Aug 2022 / Topics: Hybrid cloud
Did you know that more than 70% of enterprise customers are currently using more than one cloud? Whether this is an on-premises private cloud, a colo private cloud or hyperscalers such as AWS and Azure. This will be no different for managed service providers, who operate and maintain these clouds to facilitate their customers. Are you one of them?
Whether you are migrating to the public cloud, or have a comprehensive hybrid cloud as your cloud strategy, it is extremely important that you can deploy, manage and secure your resources as simply as possible. Having different clouds each with their own software, services and management adds an extra level of complexity to take into account in your daily operations. The more diversity you bring into your IT landscape, the more this impinges on operational efficiency and the productivity of your IT staff. Not to mention the compliance and security risks you will face.
Still, the multi-cloud model is fast becoming the most adopted IT architecture of our time. According to the same FY22 H2 Benchmark Study conducted by VMware cited above, 81% of enterprises expect to be multi-cloud by 2024. This is not surprising, because a multi-cloud strategy has many advantages. You avoid vendor lock-in, which keeps your business flexible, you can deploy workloads where they fit best, it helps you to innovate faster. And these are just a few examples.
But even with a multi-cloud strategy, it is not all gold that shines. It's like playing simultaneous chess on multiple boards: how do you keep an overview and know which move to make on each board? Or, in multi-cloud terms: how do you maintain consistency across all clouds and locations and know what happens where?
The biggest fear of multi-cloud is that of inconsistency, for example in security. Securing one cloud is already an enormous challenge, let alone multiple clouds. Inconsistency also puts pressure on the productivity of IT staff. Multi-cloud implies more operations with different procedures and tools, as we saw above. This requires more time anyway, while good IT people are scarce. And what about the stability of infrastructure and applications, reliability and costs?
Should you then abandon a multi-cloud strategy altogether? Of course not. You just have to make sure you remove as many risks and challenges as you can, so that a multi-cloud strategy works to your advantage. Bring all the different clouds under one cloud-agnostic umbrella, so you achieve cross-cloud compatibility. Create a single point of truth with consistent configurations, automation, integrated monitoring, the use of AI/ML tools, so you can overcome the fear of inefficiency, failure and operational risk.
What if you were able to utilise all of the skillsets that you and your highly skilled teams have invested in and built up? What if you were able to use a set of tools to manage your assets across multiple cloud venues? What if you could use the same concepts and constructs that you already are very familiar with? You can do all of this when you use VMware’s set of Cross-Cloud services.
From the deployment of VMware Cloud across public clouds, to managing your assets, securing your data, ensuring that global governance is adhered, to supporting you and your customers digital transformation with modern application development… It is all possible though VMware’s products and services. Simplicity at your doorstep.
As an MSP, the VMware SaaS portfolio is available to you, for you to build your own services around to add further value to your customers. Below are some of the products within this portfolio that can help you achieve and prosper in the multi-cloud world.
The multi-cloud model is an integral part of today's IT. It's up to you as an MSP to make it simple. Therefore, a short multi-cloud checklist for you to consider. Does your multi-cloud strategy give you the following benefits:
If you cannot tick all the boxes or are not sure whether you can, please come and speak to the Cloud Experts at Insight. We can help show you the value of VMware’s portfolio.
As a VMware Aggregator Partner, Insight is pleased to offer VMware’s Cross-Cloud services together with a raft of other products and solutions as part of the VMware Cloud Provider Programme. Contact one of our cloud specialists for a talk.
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