As cloud adoption has accelerated to match the rapid pace of business change, it is imperative that businesses remain focused on their desired objectives rather than allowing strategy to be led by the available cloud capabilities.
For many embarking on their digital transformation, cloud services have been seen and consumed as a commodity. From storage resource to platform, infrastructure, or software as a service, an array of providers deliver different cloud solutions, all of which solve a specific business need.
This has resulted in many businesses finding themselves with an environment that leverages a complex mix of providers, clouds and networks – in addition to their existing on-premises infrastructure – that now make up their full environment.
And while each of these cloud services offers clear business benefits individually, combining them without careful planning creates complexity and reduces efficiency. Optimizing the connectivity between, access to, and the usage, management, spend, and security of this unplanned multicloud environment is essential in order to regain the initial benefits including lower costs, improved performance, and reduced risk.
Add to this a hybrid-remote workforce with its own needs, as well as the constant evolution of business needs, and you quickly realise you are working with a moving target when it comes to delivering services to the business, its customers, contractors, and employees.
As your environment further evolves, it’s important not to lose sight of the challenges your business faces and the desired outcomes you want to achieve, and then begin the journey of finding solutions that help you reach them. Start with the business and work towards technology, rather than the other way around.
In this 5-part blog series on accelerating business performance via multicloud connectivity and in conjunction with our partner Cisco, we will consider particular areas of complexity and suggest technologies and service-based solutions that can improve business agility.
Here are some of the key business outcomes you should aim to achieve from your investment in multicloud connectivity:
- Innovation – choosing cloud solutions with cutting edge features that work best for your business creates an environment that supports modernization and advancement. Each decision that impacts your multi cloud environment should enhance innovation.
- Competitive Advantage – every new investment should provide the business with enhanced business capabilities – from operating more productively, to lowering cost, or improving security – to increase your advantage over the competition.
- Service Delivery – the entirety of your multicloud environment (no matter how complex) needs to serve up a reliable, high-quality customer experience for anyone using it.
- Security – every time a customer, contractor, or employee touches a part of your multi cloud environment, you need to know that your business’ data, services, and applications are secure.
To reduce complexity, your multicloud environment needs to operate as close to a single environment as possible, achieving these goals at each step.
In the coming weeks, this multi-part blog series will focus on how to go about achieving critical business outcomes from different perspectives:
- 4 C-Level Executives That Need to Rethink the Business’ Multicloud Strategy – a look at how four roles within the C-Suite should reevaluate their approach to the challenges of multicloud.
- Ways SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) Simplifies Multicloud – how a software-defined WAN can reduce complexity, improve performance, and ease innovation.
- Advantages SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) Brings to Your Multicloud Access Strategy – how using a Secure Access Service Edge can simplify how users access disparate cloud applications and services across the environment.
- Reasons Managing Your Multicloud Should Be Outsourced – why leveraging an experienced multicloud connectivity partner can ensure objectives are met and outcomes are achieved as your environment evolves.
If you would like to learn more about the challenges of multicloud and how to simplify the execution of your evolving strategy, click here.
Maintel, in partnership with Cisco, has a proven track record of designing and implementing secure hybrid working and multicloud connectivity solutions for any organisation. From auditing the existing infrastructure to planning network transformation, we can help you harness the power of innovative networking technology at scale.
