The link between digital advancement and business expansion has generated widespread demand for significant acceleration of digital operations, including multicloud IT. This demand has driven IT expansion on a global scale, encompassing various data centers, public cloud providers and edge locations. Dell Technologies recently commissioned the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) to create a white paper to find key insights regarding the transparent shifts of IT operations and the complex challenges that come with these shifts. ESG’s goal was to further explore what is driving common multicloud complexities and offer an example of how Dell can help solve those multicloud challenges.
ESG found that today, 86% of organizations use multiple public cloud providers, with 65% relying on more than two.1 Multicloud offers many advantages, such as optimizing data allocation by focusing on providing agility, scalability and resilience. However, multicloud also introduces complexities that challenge IT professionals. In this blog, we’ll explore these challenges and offer practical solutions provided by Dell APEX, our multicloud and as-a-Service portfolio that helps organizations achieve balance between choice and consistent user experiences. Dell APEX helps remove complexities, reduce inefficiencies and lower costs—enabling IT teams to dedicate their efforts to fostering innovation.
Scott Sinclair, ESG’s Practice Director, echoes the need to solve some of these multicloud challenges and talks about how multicloud complexities must be a top priority for every organization in this short conversation.
Multicloud Complexity Factors and Solutions
Sixty-four percent2 of ESG survey respondents believe IT complexity hampers operations and digital initiatives Organizations need to keep one thing in mind: To tackle multicloud complexity, understanding it differs from solving it.
One of the major factors causing multicloud complexity is the distributed nature of multicloud IT, which hinders data and application portability and adds cost, complexity and risk to data movement. To overcome this, organizations need to consider simplifying cross-location application and data management for enhanced consistency, operational speed, cost of data movement and storage and risk reduction. Prioritizing streamlined data mobility is imperative, as 50% of organizations are regularly moving data across multiple clouds.3 In addition, 65%4 of those surveyed acknowledge challenges in application and data portability, leveraging familiar tools and technologies to mitigate risk and lessen the complexity and pressure on IT teams affecting security and performance.
Another key contributor to the overall multicloud complexity story is the siloed and diverse nature of each environment, which can make it hard to select the optimal public or private cloud environment for a given app or use case. Each location may require different expertise and tools to use it effectively. This eventually results in siloed teams and extra complexity regarding collaboration efforts. To break down this siloed environment, we recommend eliminating the cloud platform location restrictions and overcoming silos by adopting solutions that provide flexibility in deploying your workloads. Various teams and application environments may have preferences for specific cloud environments, so embrace solutions that grant the freedom to deploy and choose your desired experience, whether on-premises or off-premises.
A final defining factor of multicloud complexity is the limitations of traditional operations on-premises, which may burden IT staff and further limit flexibility in choosing a deployment location. A cure to these limitations is to ease internal operational burdens with on-premises infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions. By adopting this model, organizations can expedite critical operations, freeing IT personnel from time-consuming maintenance tasks. IaaS simplifies operations, mitigates IT and business risks and defers costs to future quarters, allowing for more infrastructure investments. This approach also addresses staffing challenges in budget-constrained and competitive hiring environments.
Dell Technologies is making it easier to manage the complexities of using multiple clouds with the Dell APEX portfolio. Different environments offer different strengths, but combining those environments without a comprehensive strategy can lead to the above challenges what we refer to as “multicloud by default.” Dell APEX delivers multicloud by design, enabling organizations to unify multicloud operations, find flexibility in workload placement and seamlessly integrate the strengths of both public and private cloud solutions. In addition, Dell APEX enhances IT capabilities with cloud agility, cost-effective solutions and sustainable asset management.
