Many businesses are testing ways to use multicloud in digital transformation<\/a>, to reduce risk, avoid getting locked into using one vendor and get more of the services they need.<\/p>\n I spoke with Brian Chee<\/a>, co-host at TWiT: This Week in Tech<\/a> \u2013 a network of nearly 30 tech podcasts and IT Specialist at University of Hawai\u2019i, to find out how and why the university uses multicloud. He shares his advice for those deciding whether it\u2019s a good option for their business, or just getting started.<\/p>\n For Chee, it comes down to none of the major cloud providers doing everything they want. For example, since they\u2019ve been wooing University of Hawai\u2019i, Chee\u2019s been considering the value of Google Cloud. But as they\u2019ve only just started providing infrastructure as a service (IaaS), he couldn\u2019t run anything custom on it without a lot of painful retooling. If he were willing to retool, Google Cloud would be economical. They have many and varied data centers globally, making load balancing and failover capability simple. He thought setting up global load balancing (GLB) on Google Cloud was easier than Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, but that will change, as Microsoft and Amazon invest big in undersea cables.<\/p>\n University of Hawai\u2019i has 10 campuses and 30 research institutes. Its IT group acts more like an Internet Service Provider (ISP.) They provide connectivity to the research and instruction units, but departments buy their own equipment and services. Brian says between them, departments use almost all the cloud providers he\u2019s heard of.<\/p>\n Recently they\u2019ve started turning the corner and using private cloud.<\/a> It delivers services through IT infrastructure used only by their organization. About three years ago, they deployed a system based on VMware<\/a> so they could pool resources and provision systems<\/a> through a portal. Multicloud can happen by circumstance rather than design. Kaspersky\u2019s Andrey Pozhogin explains: \u201cWhen changes happen \u2013 like a company restructure, merger or acquisition \u2013 the IT team are suddenly managing a very different technical infrastructure stack. How to best resolve this is a unique decision based on your needs. There is no cookie-cutter solution.\u201d<\/p>\n Chee says, start by making two lists, \u201cneeds\u201d and \u201cwants.\u201d When you test drive, use these to decide where to place workloads.<\/p>\n As they offer deals for test-driving, you should set up test runs with the major cloud service providers.<\/p>\n Try to verify the claims in their brag sheets and marketing materials. This is important because all the big players are different. \u201cToo many people just believe salespeople,\u201d says Chee. \u201cIndependent, unbiased testing is almost non-existent nowadays.\u201d<\/p>\n Look for a dashboard that gives you one-touch capability on every switch port, several views into the inter-device path and the health of everything connected to it. Switch ports can be physical or virtual, as long as they talk SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol<\/a>.) Chee says market pressure means vendors are moving their dashboards toward this kind of functionality.<\/p>\n Chee thinks security is lagging behind DevOps<\/a>. \u201cThey tend to be separate tools. SecOps<\/a> hasn\u2019t caught up with the DevOps folks or a single pane of glass<\/a> yet, but they\u2019re getting there.\u201d He\u2019s only heard of one tool, TotalView by PastSolutions, that combines DevOps and SecOps, but expects more are on the way.<\/p>\n People often think trying to set up failover between cloud providers is complex. Not so much anymore, says Chee. \u201cFor cloud providers to stay competitive, they\u2019ve had to develop Application Programming Interface (API) sets to manage and control IaaS and SaaS images remotely.\u201d Another good thing to include in your proof of concept.<\/p>\n The C-suite (senior executives) should set the tone for the company, but too often they force exceptions on the IT group, like not wanting to change their password, says Chee.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n If they don\u2019t lead by example, the rest of the company will keep bad habits like weak passwords, using sticky notes and personal web browsing on company equipment. The C-suite must also be willing to invest in cybersecurity training and company-wide licenses for security tools like password vaults.<\/p>\n Chee thinks the flexibility to move applications and data from one cloud provider to another will be critical in the next few years, and he says things are happening there. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be long before I can shop complex mathematical tasks around various computing clusters worldwide to find the best price. I think that kind of portability is just half a dozen years away.\u201d<\/p>\n Businesses are choosing multicloud to diversify where they place their workloads among the major cloud service providers, taking advantage of their strengths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No cloud provider does everything most organizations need. Enter: Multicloud. What should you do to make the most of it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2567,"featured_media":35996,"template":"","coauthors":[3729],"class_list":{"0":"post-35995","1":"emagazine","2":"type-emagazine","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"emagazine-category-cloud","7":"emagazine-category-digital-transformation","8":"emagazine-tag-cloud","9":"emagazine-tag-education"},"hreflang":[{"hreflang":"x-default","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/secure-futures-magazine\/services-multi-cloud\/35995\/"},{"hreflang":"en-us","url":"https:\/\/usa.kaspersky.com\/blog\/secure-futures-magazine\/services-multi-cloud\/22669\/"}],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/emagazine\/35995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/emagazine"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/emagazine"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=35995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Why multicloud?<\/h2>\n
Does multicloud mean chaos?<\/h2>\n
\n![\"services](\"https:\/\/media.kasperskydaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/92\/2020\/06\/26051657\/153-service-multicloud-inline-2-1024x768.jpg\")
\nOn top of that, Chee says university departments want a hybrid cloud environment<\/a>. He knows some are experimenting with Microsoft Azure, who has a deal on trial machines for educational institutions. He uses Amazon Web Services<\/a>\u2018 Glacier<\/a> for data archiving with a failover: An alternative destination if there\u2019s disruption on the original transfer method.<\/p>\nGetting started with multicloud<\/h2>\n
There\u2019s no \u201cone size fits all\u201d solution<\/h3>\n
Know your needs from your wants<\/h3>\n
Proof of concept (POC)<\/h3>\n
Find a cloud-agnostic dashboard<\/h3>\n
Always have security top of your mind<\/h3>\n
Reducing multicloud risk<\/h2>\n
Portability is the future<\/h2>\n