How to Turn Multi-Cloud Challenges into Opportunities

We’ve covered the many advantages that multi-cloud computing can offer organizations. In what follows, we will also discuss some of the challenges in which IT service providers may be able to play a role in getting the maximum positive outcome from multi-cloud. Also with these challenges, again, we have included some sales consulting questions that can help end customers arrive at the right executive decision when it comes to multi-cloud.

Setting up Data Protection within Multi-Cloud Settings

A multifaceted cloud security strategy is recommended to successfully protect sensitive data and address multi-cloud security concerns. The creation of a centralized framework for data governance is a key component of such an approach. This framework may provide a foundation for managing data practices consistently across different cloud platforms, such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and WS Cloud, by establishing explicit rules on data classification, ownership, access controls, and retention periods.

The use of cloud-agnostic data security technologies could be another valuable remedy. These technologies may play a major role in enabling the analyzing and handling of data in multiple cloud environments. They may help security measures by controlling data flow, implementing stringent access restrictions, and identifying and classifying sensitive data.

Implementing Data Loss Prevention (DLP) systems could also proof to be essential. Sensitive data can be kept within the boundaries of the protected multi-cloud perimeter thanks to these solutions, which are intended to prevent illegal data breaches. Furthermore, to avoid breaches and unwanted access, encrypting data while it’s in transit and at rest becomes a crucial practice.

It’s also critical to establish clear regulations for data ownership and access. These regulations must be consistently applied across all cloud platforms and access modalities - to guarantee that sensitive data is only available to those who have been thoroughly screened.

Last but not least, carrying out regular risk assessments and audits is essential for locating and fixing any possible security and privacy flaws within a multi-cloud IT infrastructure setup. This proactive technique may strengthen the entire defensive mechanism against data breaches and privacy infringements by ensuring that data protection methods are constantly in line with the most recent security standards and threats.

To really benefit from multi-cloud architectures and successfully mitigate the challenges of cloud security, businesses will sure have to implement comprehensive data protection and privacy procedures. Using systems integrators and MSPs for more successfully and affordably choosing and managing multi-cloud security solutions can be a viable option.

Multi-cloud sales consultancy questions for IT service providers to ask clients:

• When considering multi-cloud, what data security concerns might you have when it comes to cloud security consistency and are you familiar with the use of a centralized framework?
• How do you presently prevent breaches of sensitive data, and have you thought about how encryption and multi-cloud DLP may improve your security within a multi-cloud setting?
• Are you aware of the ways in which routine risk assessments and audits may be useful in identifying and resolving potential security and privacy issues in a multi-cloud IT infrastructure setup?
• To safeguard sensitive data in the cloud, how do you presently manage and enforce access controls & data ownership, and do you have any concerns when thinking about employing multiple clouds to this regard?

Minimizing Data Egress Costs

Cloud service providers have created pricing models that tend to use egress costs to gently influence customers’ loyalty and long-term cloud strategy. These charges are imposed whenever data is moved from the cloud provider’s network to another cloud service or back to an on-premises system, adding a cost factor for organizations looking to navigate their cloud computing needs.

The imposition of egress fees fulfills two objectives. Basically, it discourages users from moving their data outside of the cloud provider’s network and instead encourages them to stay on the cloud infrastructure. In addition, the cost of cloud administration may progressively rise as organizations depend more on cloud services and as their IT infrastructure becomes more complicated. Due to increasing complexity, regular data transfers between cloud-hosted applications and on-premises settings which may raise the potential costs.

However, the egress fee landscape is often overtaken by opacity. The price structure of some cloud giants is based on whether data is flowing across multiple availability zones within the same area, over the Internet, or across geographical regions. Organizations trying to effectively estimate their cloud expenses may face substantial hurdles due to the complex invoicing methods.

IT departments do have solutions at their disposal to reduce these egress expenses. One strategy to reduce cloud storage consumption and data transfers is demand management, although this may unintentionally interfere with crucial business processes. An even more effective strategy may be to optimize the cloud architecture via cloud-hosted applications that need little to no interaction with on-premises systems, since this would do away with the necessity for costly data transfers.

Additionally, by setting up on-demand private connections for data transmission, organizations may even avoid expensive egress costs. These private connections are able to avoid exorbitant expenses sometimes associated with public cloud egress fees while providing greater speed, reduced latency, increased reliability, and heightened security over public Internet connectivity.

Understanding and controlling egress fees is essential for preserving operational agility and financial efficiency. Using systems integrators and MSPs for more successfully and affordably managing data egress can be a viable option. Through their expertise in negotiating the complexities of cloud networking, organizations may effectively use cloud technology without incurring excessive expenses.

Multi-cloud sales consultancy questions for IT service providers to ask clients:

• How are present egress fees affecting your public cloud budget and its cost efficiency, and have you thought of any ways to minimize these costs?
• How do you navigate the complexity of public cloud egress fees to estimate your company’s cloud expenses in detail?
• Have you thought about ways to cut down on public cloud egress expenses and about optimizing your cloud architecture to decrease data transfers?
• Have you considered establishing on-demand private connections as a manner to improve security and performance without having to pay public cloud egress fees?

Multi-Cloud Opportunities Offered by Worldstream

Worldstream provides an expending Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions portfolio to clients globally, including highly customizable bare metal dedicated servers, private and public cloud, intelligent DDoS protection to mitigate large and under the radar attacks, colocation, and more. This is all supported by our own proprietary global backbone. With IaaS deployments conceivable in data centers across Europe, we have plenty of options for reseller hosting partners.

As an IaaS solutions provider with a global backbone, Worldstream offers ample opportunities for IT service providers and end clients to professionally shape a multi-cloud architecture, even at the edge. Worldstream offers multi-cloud building blocks such as secure cloud on-ramps from the data center to well-known American public cloud providers. Worldstream’s portfolio provides a variety of infrastructure as-a-service solutions, perfect for designing a multi-cloud architecture. These solutions include private cloud, file, block and object storage, and colocation. Also, our proprietary WS Cloud public cloud platform, powered by Virtuozzo open-source technology, provides a cost-effective European cloud alternative.

This is part two of a three-part article about navigating the multi-cloud space. Visit our website next week for the last section, where we dive into compliance and regulatory challenges.

You might also like:

• How to deliver any IT functionality As-a-Service.
• The difference between Bare Metal Cloud and Dedicated Servers.
• What are your options against a growing number of DDoS attacks?

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