As more organisations across the Middle East and Africa region embrace a multi-cloud strategy, they are realising the benefits that come with having multiple cloud service providers, which includes agility, fast response times and the option to leverage the best platform for each workload.
By Rick Vanover, senior director: product strategy at Veeam
However, this comes with challenges to ensure seamless data movement and storage across platforms. It is imperative that organisations leverage data portability into their cloud security model to avoid potential data loss and data silos.
Benefits of a multi-cloud strategy
Companies are recognising the need for a customised tooling approach as workflows become increasingly complex. Adopting a single vendor’s product may look like an organisation has a unified strategy but it can impede teams from efficiently completing crucial tasks.
This is where a multi-cloud strategy comes into play and offers organisations the ability to select from a variety of cloud service providers that maximises its unique strengths and capabilities. Through this, organisations have the flexibility to choose the best cloud platform for each workload, providing flexibility and agility. Leveraging the strengths of multiple cloud platforms, organisations can optimise performance, availability, and cost efficiency.
In today’s current economic climate, businesses are increasingly under pressure to optimise technology investments whilst minimising costs. Business leaders have to be strategic in what they choose to invest in and what to prioritise.
According to the Veeam Data Protection Trends Report 2023, hybrid IT continues to be the norm in the region, with a relatively even balance between servers within the data center and those that are cloud hosted. Additionally, 46% organizations in the Middle East and Africa reported cloud-hosted server instances and 64% of production data is stored in a cloud at some point in its lifecycle.
Moreover, a multi-cloud strategy offers additional benefits to organisations. An open approach enables teams to use the tools they are more comfortable with, reducing inefficiencies and allowing for seamless workflows. The cloud market is highly competitive, which leads to better pricing for organizations as vendors strive to offer the best value proposition.
Challenges in data portability
The biggest challenges of a multi-cloud strategy include ensuring seamless data movement and storage across platforms. Legacy applications often lack the capability to move efficiently across platforms, making it difficult for organisations that still rely heavily on these applications to enhance data portability.
Lack of infrastructure is also a significant hurdle in ensuring seamless data movement across platforms. This is particularly true for smaller organisations that may not have the resources to invest in the necessary infrastructure to enhance data portability.
Strategies to enhance data portability
To enhance data portability, organisations can leverage this as an opportunity for digital housekeeping and remove unnecessary applications. Categorising data as Good (important data that needs to have availability), Green (data that should be kept for a certain period of time), and Gone (unnecessary data to be removed) can help with this process.
Removing unnecessary data reduces data complexity and the risk of data loss during migration. Additionally, applying a cloud security model from the start so that platforms are built around a unified system that allows for centralised management is crucial. This enables organisations to monitor data across multiple cloud platforms, reducing the risk of data loss or corruption.
Organisations should also aim for sustainable data portability rather than the best data portability. This can be achieved by conducting a business impact analysis to determine the impact of a pause in services and identifying the appropriate level of data portability. The business impact analysis should also include identifying the risks of data loss, corruption or exposure during migration. This allows organisations to plan for potential data issues and minimise any potential downtime.
Overall, a multi-cloud strategy can provide significant benefits to organisations in the Asia-Pacific region. However, to ensure seamless data movement and storage across platforms, organisations must integrate data portability into their cloud security model.
By removing unnecessary applications, applying a cloud security model, and aiming for sustainable data portability, organisations can enhance data portability and avoid data silos and potential data loss. With careful planning and execution, organisations can fully realise the benefits of a multi-cloud strategy.