Critical reasons to establish a multi-cloud environment

Years from now, when we look back at 2019, it will be apparent that we were watching the very first act of the play that is Cloud Computing. Every year, the plot thickens and becomes more interesting as new advances in cloud computing emerge. Although cloud consumption is continually increasing, for many organizations, only a fraction of their applications have moved to the cloud. Only 20 percent of workloads have made their way to the public cloud—and these are not yet companies’ core, mission-critical workloads.  

The 80 percent of remaining workloads that remain is where real enterprise value lies.

The State of the Cloud

Early in 2019, RightScale conducted its eighth annual “State of the Cloud” report, surveying over 700 IT professionals on their cloud infrastructure adoption. One of the key findings was that, on average, enterprises use five different clouds, spread across public and private clouds.

Many companies have taken advantage of the low hanging solutions, moving many “front office” applications to the public cloud. Social media, client-initiated inquiries (like order status inquiries), and digital shopping carts have proven to be typical applications to move to the public cloud.

Successful Cloud Initiatives

Executives report a wide range of successes with public cloud initiatives, especially around their abilities to scale and grow. IBM Institute for Business Value’s Hybrid Cloud Survey of 2016 shared that the five most critical reasons to establish a multi-cloud environment were:

• Expanding into new industries
• Improving the customer experience
• Increasing existing revenue
• Creating new revenue sources and
• Expanding into product/services portfolio

Think for a moment about your organization's most successful cloud initiative. Were these outcomes achieved?

New Frontiers

When it comes to the most secure, regulated applications, many companies are slower to move to the public cloud—if they move at all. The IBM Institute for Business Value found that this is especially true for highly regulated industries like healthcare and banking. These more sensitive applications may be better suited to private cloud solutions, traditional IT, or a hybrid solution.

Many workloads are left behind, and a new approach is required to address them. A new era of cloud computing is on the rise.