The vast majority of companies have moved at least parts of their business to the cloud. The benefits in terms of cost savings, improved operations and similar are too great to ignore.
Some have gone either a public or private cloud route, but most have a hybrid strategy to get the best of both worlds, writes Richard Vester, group Eexecutive at the cloud services division of EOH.
However, managing hybrid cloud models and multi-cloud strategies means having to manage multiple vendors. Moreover, over and above hybrid cloud infrastructure, a business is likely making use of a number of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications as well as on-premise software, and storing data both off and on-premise too.
This results in businesses having to manage tens or even hundreds of different service providers and vendors. Over and above handling multiple vendors, the business needs to keep tabs on pricing, ensure it has the functionality it needs, and that all investments are helping the organisation achieve its vision.
So how can multiple vendors in a hybrid cloud environment be managed productively and effectively, and in a way that helps meet the business objectives that the cloud strategy was put in place for? Any hybrid cloud strategy must be in line with the crucial business goals, and fit into any other digital transformation projects. Define what the business needs are, and how you are going to manage them in a cloud environments.
It is also important to know exactly what assets – both technology and information – the business has. Cloud technologies are so pervasive, it is hard to keep track of them all, but having a single and complete view of everything in use within the business will make sure that resources are being allocated effectively, and that budgets are kept under control.
It is also crucial to have good cloud management solutions, particularly ones that boast good visibility. The more entrenched the business is in a multi-cloud strategy, the more important cloud management tools become. Making use of multiple vendors can be a daunting prospect if you don’t have the right tools in place. You need a solution provider that uses a ‘single pane of glass’ type of portal for managing and provisioning cloud resources.
EOH allows organisations to manage all their cloud services in one place. We are enabling access to some of the world’s major public cloud providers through our CloudBolt engine, including Azure, AWS, Google, IBM, Openstack, Oracle, Red Hat to name a few. This allows our clients to deploy anything that sits within these clouds across their own infrastructure, EOH cloud infrastructure or any other infrastructure they prefer.
The portal is both simple and intuitive, offering easy navigation, deployment and management, providing customers with access to the full range of global cloud services in one central place. To remove the complexity associated with having to manage multiple relationships with different providers, EOH has added a public cloud brokerage to our offering, simplifying access to all of the public cloud solutions out there. You need a good cloud broker for a true single pane of glass view.
EOH’s Cloud Services division can offer everything a cloud broker can. This includes the ability to bundle many individual services together and present them as a unified service, help move data into the cloud and integrate the customer’s network with the provider’s network, and can customise cloud services for individual customers.
