Multi-cloud environments offer several advantages over single-cloud environments—such as the ability to choose best-in-breed services from specific cloud providers, to achieve regional compliance, and to bolster resilience across your cloud estate. However, managing a multi-cloud estate is complex. The root challenge is that every cloud provider uses administrative tools that only work within its cloud. This makes it difficult, for example, to implement consistent security policies across clouds, or to monitor consumption and spend across clouds.
“Cloud complexity must be dealt with as a top-order construct,” according to Dion Heathcliffe, vice president and lead analyst at Constellation Research, in a new video. “Managing multi-cloud as a series of silos is duplicative, uncoordinated and unsustainable.”
The solution, Dion argues, is for organizations to embrace a cross-cloud approach. “Cross-cloud is a perspective that unites cloud strategy, application development, management, governance and operations across an enterprise’s full cloud estate,” he explains. “Cross-cloud articulates a vision for modernizing applications and managing cloud infrastructure across a multi-cloud environment.”
“Enlightened IT leaders are elevating their thinking and using cross-cloud to organize and position their cloud estates for maximum agility, versatility, cost reduction, and the ability to innovate more rapidly.”
Dion Hinchcliffe, VP and lead analyst at Constellation Research
“I view cross-cloud as how to succeed with IT complexity today,” says Dion. He identifies four beneficial outcomes to a cross-cloud approach:
- Accelerate the delivery of modern apps, especially those that draw resources from multiple clouds.
- Simplify multi-cloud operations while retaining a single point of enterprise control.
- Maximize the value of clouds by unleashing resources across them.
- Ensure a consistent model for security with a Zero Trust strategy.
Ultimately, Dion says, the question is, “How do organizations produce better software, faster, using multiple mutually integrated clouds, without adding new management burdens or introducing risks?”
The answer? A portfolio of software solutions, such as VMware Cross-Cloud™ services. With these services, Dion explains, “IT and business can come together to mature enterprise cloud capabilities and make them more successful.”
