CLEUR

1. Shadow IT/Cloud Creep; 2. Multiple SaaS solutions; 3. Horses for courses; 4. Risk management

The use cases are as varied as the companies consuming the services, but the overlying theme is going to the 'best' vendor for any particular service. 'best' may be defined as capability, or price, or availabilty.

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less likely to depend on one vendor

costs and implementation need to be considered as well.

the adage of the best tool for the job applies here. Meaning if there is a workload that works best on one cloud then why not use that but not being locked in is key. Working across clouds is the requirment

Unlocking the value of data using the best services available across the web. The whole find the cheapest compute is a fools errand.

most users that I talk to end up choosing multiple clouds based on applications, or in a multi-vendor strategy. That being said, we are early in seeing well thought out #multicloud strategy. Services are fragmented across different providers.

Example: web conferencing. Almost always 'best' hosted, as the major point is connecting across multiple organizations.

The primary use cases for enterprise multiclouds that I've seen tends to vary, but in many cases it enables complex organizations to build systems that fit multiple needs across departments.

the big question is does #multicloud make you more or less agile? More or less efficient? More or less secure?

As a consumer of multicloud at the IaaS layer, I'm looking for location, and keeping my vendors on their toes.

it depends on which context. Using some clouds may be relevant for specific, smaller use cases (e.g. regulated industries, specific countries etc). But it comes at the risk of increased complexity and perhaps lack of alignment across existing procedures.

Different horses of different courses. If you have a Microsoft set af applications and depend on Microsoft security, Microsoft Azure is a good bet. If you are using Microsoft personal apps, Office 365 is a good bet. If you are sharing docs, google docs is great.

the other advantage of #multicloud that is taken into account by enterprise architects is the flexibility to utilize more than one service provider rather than relying on a single vendor

@dvellante Is agility the goal? Or is it capability. If I wanted agility, I stick to a single cloud. If I want differentiated capabilities then I'd look to multicloud.

if we take "cloud" as a generic term for any SaaS offering, then @dfloyer is right and multi-cloud becomes an almost inevitable reality, between "Infrastructure" SaaS offerings, shadow IT and any other commercial SaaS offerings

My two cents: the principal use cases for multiclouds involving giving enterprise uses the option of deploying virtualized, containerized, and/or serverless workloads onto the optimal cloud platform while assuring seamless interoperability and manageabilty throughout.

@jennjshin I agree. Flexibility is a huge factor.

@dvellante #multicloud can be more agile in terms of services and providers but it could also be less agile if the overall system is very complex and intricate

implementing new app development that shares code and data

Cisco has scores of datacenters around the world of our own, but when we needed to put conference bridges in South America, we turned to a public provider. Our own facilities are great for our known workloads and scale, but the public providers can have unique capabilities.

Why would anyone looking for agility look to any other provider than AWS or Microsoft. If agility were the goal I'd hitch my wagon to either. If I want to build something that can't be done in one, then I go multi-cloud.

Amazon's serverless (Lambda) and deep storage, for instance, or Googles AI tools.

@jennjshin So true. Multicloud gets into complexity. How to enable simplicity in management of the end-to-end multicloud is a sticky wicket problem.

The number of SaaS clouds is very high, often based on AWS IaaS etc.

- SaaS refreshes of legacy apps are a big reason for enterprise multi-cloud. I've heard several CIO's mention that vendors have updates solutions for legacy apps but they're only offering SaaS options to get away from on-prem support.

@CTOAdvisor Well, as I recall there was a period where AWS was down last year and there were many organizations who couldn't access their own system. I even had students who couldn't access the online classroom.

IMO, minimizing the movement of data between private and public clouds, and moving code to data where possible, is essential in a multi-cloud world. Quality networks essential to support this new world.

@CTOAdvisor, agility comes in other forms. Like, say, Kubernetes which came from Google.

Integrating a single Cloud into your operations is super hard. Integrating multi-cloud is exponentially more difficult. The use cases I've seen so far don't justify the challenge or risk.

@rquelle That's right. B2B conferencing will grow increasingly federated across private and public clouds.

@jennjshin Right. That's often a case of corporate IT building a multicloud to leverage the investments that the LOB have already made in various private and public clouds for specific apps. Necessity.

Agility, agility, agility.

new app dev requiring speed and scale using microservices as the core element

ultimately, ROI.

As an application developer, the ability to control my application runtime environment (containerization) and hand that off to a well-thought out orchestrator for deployment (Kubernetes) helps me concentrate on the business problem I'm solving, rather than infra.

cloudnative hits all the big points: security, analytics, networking, IoT and common management all abstracting those away from writing apps fast at scale sharing code and data ..that is my opinion

Good question. Primary reason is that serverless frameworks are not yet mature enough. K8s/Containers are the next best thing.

perhaps an important factor is workload portability / mobility / compatibility. Build apps in one format, execute anywhere, move wherever needed / wherever the pricing is best. No need to re-architect apps every time the platform changes.

- I still think FOMO is one of the biggest drivers for cloud-native and K8s. Most companies cannot make a clear business case for or against new technologies. Most of them can't even answer the question of how much their applications cost....

Operationally, we aren't ready for serverless. K8s is an evolutionary change that delivers a familiar abstraction. It's not where the puck is moving.

kubernetes and containers save a lot of time and effort in being able to launch an app or microservice. It also enables standardization and minimizes the amount of time needed to get an app up and running.

@rquelle nails the agility point but cloud agnostic approach will win bc heterogenous workloads take advantage of these awesome abstractions which simplify the dev speed, scale, and ease of dev/deployment

@ballen_clt but they can see that their outdated environments & antiquated processes are hindering innovation, execution speed and efficiency. All of this provided that they can implement containers in a lean fashion.

I think we are a little over-rotated on "microservices", to be honest. Containers are simply a better way to package most apps, and Kubernetes and its attendant patterns (distributed config services) are useful to apps at all points of their architectural development.

1. Speed; 2. flexibility; 3. Coolness / Resume-building

Lift and shift to the next cloud platform requires refactoring legacy apps in containers. Portability,, scalability, efficiency, migration.

Some of the largest growth areas of applications are systems of engagement, advanced analytics, and AI. These types of applications need different tools than (say) systems of record. Kubernetes and containers are low-overhead & simpler environments for fast AD.

@ascohen says it is hard enough the manage 1 infrastructure, the concept of managing multiple seems kind of specious. In the past 10 years I did not see one F2000 co attempt multi-cloud, but a lot working on a hybrid strategy

What I see a lot is new application development taking advantage of new patterns ("cloud native"), yet our customers wanting to apply some of the advances in deployment to their older apps as well.

@ascohen says "The lock-in comment was part tongue-in-cheek. Getting deep into a cloud and taking advantage of it is a competitive advantage. Look @ netflix and AWS."

One of the biggest market drivers for the increased use of kuberettes/containers is that the marketplace has gotten accustomed to the latest technology and companies have grown more proficient at building cloud native apps. in short, more competition

@furrier, that may be true from a big-org, central planning view, but nearly every org has many pockets of development and innovation. "micro-services" at the org level, if you will.

@ascohen says "Do you have multi-bank for your personal finance?" my answer is yes I do