As multi-cloud strategies continue to evolve and rule over companies’ technological gamut, there are a lot of issues which are being highlighted and coming to the forefront. A multi-cloud strategy means companies are beginning to make use of multiple cloud service providers, but does this have to indicate that immediate issues need to be speed breakers in the journey towards achieving the goals? Let’s take a more in-depth look into the challenges being faced by organizations which make use of multi-cloud environments.
Data Governance and Compliance
Multiple clouds and data centers situations in different centers of the world can offer great flexibility and compliance; however, this does not happen automatically. The biggest challenge is to understand where the data resides physically — this situation might be graver for small and mid-size companies.
Given the multi-cloud environment functionality, it might be straightforward to make a mistake and end up running an application in an unapproved environment. There are tons of guidelines laid down, especially under GDPR, which when breached, can cause a collection of hefty fines; to curb this issue, IT managers might be required to prepare the right tools to garner visibility to monitor the extent of their regulatory burdens.
Multiple Vendors and Skill Sets
When an organization is utilizing multiple Cloud vendors, there are a lot of factors which need to be considered. When multiple vendors are being used, multiple skill sets will also need to be managed to get the maximum out of the Cloud. The higher the number of Saas, IaaS, and PaaS solutions leveraged, the higher would be the in-house skill sets which will need to be involved.
Even though multiple vendors are a necessity for managing the workload within large IT teams, it’s important to strive for commonality, wherever possible. Such a feature can be exercised by making use of conventional operating systems, system administration tools, and development languages to manage Cloud management platforms.
Security Issues
Security within the Cloud might be the responsibility of the vendor; however, that does not negate the fact that the end users also need to take the necessary security precautions. To maximize multi-cloud environments, it is vital to tackle the challenges represented by unique portals, migration of apps, and other security challenges. Before signing up with vendors for multi-cloud services, there is a necessity to ensure that the details of the security measures are taken into consideration and discussed with each vendor to understand the scope of their security measures.
Compliance Standards
Compliance standards are of utmost importance, irrespective of the type of Cloud services being utilized. When different Cloud providers are being employed, it is important to note if the various compliance standards like HIPAA, PCI DSS, FISMA, and SOX, are being met with each cloud vendor. If these compliance standards are not met, the data would be at risk of being hacked or lost.
Multi-cloud challenges might seem to be a lot; however, the benefits which can be obtained from multi-cloud environments can take an organization places. What is important is the proper implementation of these environments and the migration of applications to the private and public clouds which should be performed with utmost caution — the benefits will eventually supersede the challenges.
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