Solutions for:  Home Products  Small Business 1-50 employees  Medium Business 51-999 employees  Enterprise 1000+ employees

CompanyAccount
Bring on the future of technology and cybersecurity for business

Products Services Downloads Support Resource Center GDPR Blog

Magazine Menu

CLOUD AND SECURITY , DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Multicloud may be
your cloud strategy’s
silver lining
ART BY Morgan Fisher

No cloud provider does everything most organizations need.

Enter: Multicloud. What should you do to make the most of it?

4 minute read No one expects to hear bonfire-roasted undersea cables were part of what
inspired University of Hawai’i’s interest in using the cloud. Galvanized steel
conduits come out of the ground right where Honolulu’s homeless population
AUTHOR
Alyson Behr tends to light fires. More than once, the undersea cables have ended up cooked,
leaving Honolulu with a quarter of its usual bandwidth.

SHARE ARTICLE It’s a novel problem, but the benefits University of Hawai’i is getting from
multicloud are shared widely. More than 80 percent of organizations now use

more than one cloud provider, say leading technology researchers Gartner. They
 describe multicloud as, “bringing multiple cloud services under unified
 management to serve multiple service models such as Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS,) Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS,) and multiple

delivery models (public, private.)”

Many businesses are testing ways to use multicloud in digital transformation, to

reduce risk, avoid getting locked into using one vendor and get more of the
services they need.

I spoke with Brian Chee, co-host at TWiT: This Week in Tech – a network of
nearly 30 tech podcasts and IT Specialist at University of Hawai’i, to find out how
and why the university uses multicloud. He shares his advice for those deciding
whether it’s a good option for their business, or just getting started.

Why multicloud?
For Chee, it comes down to none of the major cloud providers doing everything
they want. For example, since they’ve been wooing University of Hawai’i, Chee’s
been considering the value of Google Cloud. But as they’ve only just started
providing infrastructure as a service (IaaS), he couldn’t run anything custom on it
without a lot of painful retooling. If he were willing to retool, Google Cloud would
be economical. They have many and varied data centers globally, making load
balancing and failover capability simple. He thought setting up global load
balancing (GLB) on Google Cloud was easier than Amazon Web Services or
Microsoft Azure, but that will change, as Microsoft and Amazon invest big in
undersea cables.

Does multicloud mean chaos?

University of Hawai’i has 10 campuses and 30 research institutes. Its IT group acts
more like an Internet Service Provider (ISP.) They provide connectivity to the
research and instruction units, but departments buy their own equipment and
services. Brian says between them, departments use almost all the cloud
providers he’s heard of.

Recently they’ve started turning the corner and using private cloud. It delivers
services through IT infrastructure used only by their organization. About three
years ago, they deployed a system based on VMware so they could pool
resources and provision systems through a portal.

On top of that, Chee says university departments want a hybrid cloud

environment. He knows some are experimenting with Microsoft Azure, who has a
deal on trial machines for educational institutions. He uses Amazon Web Services‘
Glacier for data archiving with a failover: An alternative destination if there’s
disruption on the original transfer method.

Getting started with multicloud

There’s no “one size fits all” solution

Multicloud can happen by circumstance rather than design. Kaspersky’s Andrey

Pozhogin explains: “When changes happen – like a company restructure, merger
or acquisition – the IT team are suddenly managing a very different technical
infrastructure stack. How to best resolve this is a unique decision based on your
needs. There is no cookie-cutter solution.”

Know your needs from your wants

Chee says, start by making two lists, “needs” and “wants.” When you test drive,
use these to decide where to place workloads.

Proof of concept (POC)

As they offer deals for test-driving, you should set up test runs with the major
cloud service providers.

Try to verify the claims in their brag sheets and marketing materials. This is
important because all the big players are different. “Too many people just believe
salespeople,” says Chee. “Independent, unbiased testing is almost non-existent
nowadays.”

Find a cloud-agnostic dashboard

Look for a dashboard that gives you one-touch capability on every switch port,
several views into the inter-device path and the health of everything connected
to it. Switch ports can be physical or virtual, as long as they talk SNMP (Simple
Network Management Protocol.) Chee says market pressure means vendors are
moving their dashboards toward this kind of functionality.

Always have security top of your mind

Chee thinks security is lagging behind DevOps. “They tend to be separate tools.
SecOps hasn’t caught up with the DevOps folks or a single pane of glass yet, but
they’re getting there.” He’s only heard of one tool, TotalView by PastSolutions,
that combines DevOps and SecOps, but expects more are on the way.

Reducing multicloud risk

People often think trying to set up failover between cloud providers is complex.
Not so much anymore, says Chee. “For cloud providers to stay competitive,
they’ve had to develop Application Programming Interface (API) sets to manage
and control IaaS and SaaS images remotely.” Another good thing to include in
your proof of concept.

The C-suite (senior executives) should set the tone for the
company, but too often they force exceptions on the IT
group, like not wanting to change their password, says Chee.

If they don’t lead by example, the rest of the company will keep bad habits like
weak passwords, using sticky notes and personal web browsing on company
equipment. The C-suite must also be willing to invest in cybersecurity training
and company-wide licenses for security tools like password vaults.

Portability is the future

Chee thinks the flexibility to move applications and data from one cloud provider
to another will be critical in the next few years, and he says things are happening
there. “It shouldn’t be long before I can shop complex mathematical tasks around
various computing clusters worldwide to find the best price. I think that kind of
portability is just half a dozen years away.”

Businesses are choosing multicloud to diversify where they place their workloads
among the major cloud service providers, taking advantage of their strengths.

Share article    

Keywords:

CLOUD EDUCATION

KASPERSKY HYBRID CLOUD SECURITY

Borderless security for your multicloud environment.

LEARN MORE

SUGGESTED ARTICLES

CLOUD AND SECURITY CLOUD AND SECURITY CLOUD AND SECURITY

Can migrating to the Dispelling the myths and Five reasons to embrace
cloud benefit your misconceptions: Is the the hybrid cloud
business? public and hybrid cloud
really secure?
There’s a lot of excitement around the It’s a question that business leaders must ask Hybrid cloud is fast becoming the cloud
cloud. But what is it, how do public and when considering adopting cloud computing choice for companies of all
private clouds differ, and how can your technologies – is your data going to be sizes. But what trends are driving this IT
business leverage it? secure in someone else’s hands? revolution?

AUTHOR INFO

Alyson Behr
Alyson Behr is a tech writer, editor, analyst and content consultant. With roots in testing, industry
competitive analysis and product reviews, she has written for numerous IT publications. Alyson
founded LabRat Magazine, the first publication devoted to the network test and measurement
community. When’s she not at her computer, she’s an avid pilot and equestrian.

MORE ARTICLES BY ALYSON BEHR

About Secure Futures What's coming next?

Secure Futures magazine is your go-to business guide for opinions, trends Be first to find out what's happening in tech, leadership and
and insight into the world of technology and cybersecurity. We help your cybersecurity.
business to bring on the future. Brought to you by Kaspersky, the global
cybersecurity experts.
STAY AHEAD
Got an idea for a story you'd like us to cover? Contact the Editor.

Home Products Small Business Products Medium Business Products Enterprise Solutions
1-50 EMPLOYEES 51-999 EMPLOYEES 1000 EMPLOYEES

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Kaspersky Small Office Security Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Cybersecurity Services

Kaspersky Internet Security Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Threat Management and Defense
Business Select
Kaspersky Total Security All Products Endpoint Security
Kaspersky Endpoint Security for
Kaspersky Security Cloud Hybrid Cloud Security
Business Advanced
Kaspersky Security Cloud – Free All Solutions
All Products
All Products

Copyright © 2020 AO Kaspersky Lab. All Rights Reserved. • Privacy Policy • Anti-Corruption Policy • License Agreement
   

Global 
Contact Us • About Us • Partners • Blog • Resource Center • Press Releases • Trust Kaspersky

Securelist • Threatpost • Eugene Personal Blog