When is the tipping point to chaos for organizations managing cloud infrastructure?
Every year, CloudBolt runs multiple research studies called CloudBolt Industry Insights where we survey hundreds of global IT professionals at large global organizations to get the pulse of the market on a variety of topics. Here are some vital findings we’ve discovered over the last 12 months or so:
- 94% of organizations agree that a hybrid cloud approach is critical for digital transformation
- 99% agree streamlining integrations is key to accelerating self-service IT
- 78% have limited insight into who is provisioning what and how to optimize costs
(The above and more can be found in The Truth About Hybrid Cloud and Digital Transformation)
Knowing the challenges other companies tend to experience allows you to relate, re-evaluate, and hopefully not make similar mistakes. So, when we uncovered the answer to the question “When do cloud strategies begin to break?” I thought we should pass it along (queue the bold, italicized type for emphasis):
Organizations begin to struggle the moment multiple public clouds are introduced
Introducing a second or third public cloud injects the following complications into the cloud equation:
- Multiple resource tracking mechanisms (one for one cloud, another for the other)
- Multiple resource tagging approaches (Are tags being applied consistently across ALL resources?)
- Multiple reporting mechanisms, recommendation mechanisms, customization capabilities
From a multi-cloud cost reporting perspective, many companies attempt to solve their challenges with people, specifically high-paid analysts, that run around aggregating information from multi-clouds and even multi-tools to get a comprehensive view of cloud spend. Then, they build custom reports to satisfy varying stakeholders throughout the target organization. It begins a vicious monthly cycle of never-ending spend on analysts (always looking in the rearview mirror and beholden to delays of weeks if not months) without really gaining control of their total infrastructure spend and optimization picture.
Then organizations graduate to Cost Management & Optimization Solutions
Seems logical: if people alone aren’t cutting it, a company should get a cost management and optimization solution. You have a multi-cloud cost problem so ‘solve for’ the cost problem, right? Now you have a cost management solution that needs to be integrated with various resource providers…. AWS, Azure, GCP, any other cloud or MSP/CSP, and on-premises VMware (most likely). But this is in addition to the Cloud Management Platform (CMP) or two that you also likely have running and connected to multiple resource providers, too. Nearly every organization I speak to also has some level of open-source tooling usage among their developer communities (e.g. Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes, OpenShift, etc.), which can further obfuscate resource tracking if not used through proper channels and integrated properly.
While 99% of companies agree that streamlining integrations is vital, it is likewise impossible to custom code, interconnect, and manage all the integrations needed across the organization (many of which are never even known about beyond the person who initially established them). How many different versions of Terraform or Ansible are in use among developers today at your organization? No one knows! This means they also don’t know how many integrations were scripted for it to work as intended. Most organizations struggle to maintain cloud management and cost integrations, let alone begin dealing with multi-tool usage and resource tracking that they have little-to-no visibility into.
Even with cost management tools, organizations still struggle for real visibility. As stated above, 8 out of 10 IT professionals have limited insight into who is provisioning what, where, and how to optimize costs. AND THEN we come to another telling statistic… 79% have hit a wall using existing tools. That means CMPs, cost management solutions, provisioning and automation tools, configuration management tools, native tools, etc. are no longer providing the value they once did because they were never designed to manage the complexity of multi-cloud at scale.
Is it any wonder, then, that 9 out of 10 IT professionals want an ‘overarching solution’? Something they can use to unify their multi-tool, multi-cloud environment. They have used words and phrases like…. “I need a manager of managers!” or “an orchestrator of orchestrators”. Regardless of what you call it, the market NEEDS help before these environments grow to be completely out of control.
Multi-cloud/multi-tool is the new reality in the evolution of cloud technology. It is where clouds tend to break for companies, and it is where the right framework of advanced capabilities can make all the difference.
Take a closer look at the industry-leading framework CloudBolt has developed. Visit www.cloudbolt.io/framework to learn more. Do not let multi-cloud break your cloud strategy.
