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A4. (1) Be clear on the architectural choices driving workload placement in single vs multiple clouds. (2) Invest in skillset, tooling, operations - DevNetOps, DevSecOps etc.

A4:
Observability tools can help with managing usage and cost, also need a cloud agnostic security solution to keep your users and data protected

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A4: Optimize your spend vs. your actual need so that you can proactively avoid unnecessary costs by understanding organic growth trends and future planned events. Like insurance or cell phone plan, it’s important to pick a #cloud provider that is right for your needs & plan ahead

A4: We have leveraged Kubernetes operators that could run in any k8s environment – using cloud agnostic open source or other enterprise software will be critical to success in multi-cloud. There are cross cloud cost or configuration management solutions in the market today.

A4: Ask yourself: "what is my business trying to achieve?" "what are my risks to that result?" if you can answer those it can push towards a decision. Is the main risk time? money? complexity? politics? Work the risks backward

Interesting quote I heard from a recent Enterprise on multi-cloud networking. "I don't want to gold plate my infrastructure and later find that my apps don't deliver". "I'd rather start with the most problematic apps, and then build infra underneath"

A4: Ultimately it comes down to making sure you can deliver service levels customers expect without going over budgeted spend.  Proactive scenario planning to understand how business driver growth can impact your IT resources and spend is important

@GaneshJKRam agreed on the Kubernetes talent, very useful, especially if they know security too

@ramsba agree, workload considerations should be top of mind. this isn't an all or nothing approach

A4 Understand the use case you are trying to address. In our work, we've identified 11 different use cases that all use the term 'multi-cloud.' Each providers different benefits and imposes different requirements and constraints. Use case drives everything else.

@ramsba agree on DevOps, DEvSecOps tooling and making it simple to build, deploy , debug/monitor the apps.

@ramsba - Interesting thought. Goldplating is definitely bad - in the cloud can be cost prohibitive and unnecessary architectural complexities.

@bernardgolden Nice one. In that same order. Use-case > architectural choice

@bernardgolden - good one. Go multicloud only if you need to.

@bernardgolden @ramsba So that means we have to PLAN our deployment ahead of time???

Q4: Make it easy to deploy applications, use standard practices like Terraform providers, automation frameworks , and Multi-Cloud Monitoring and Observability tools.

@bernardgolden +1 for "Start with the outcomes". However, these need to be actually business-centric outcomes and not just technology goals dressed up to pretend like they are biz goals.

@mdcarlson Heh

Q4: Offer specific use cases with some Code samples , API snippets, that work best for those use cases and a way to deploy those templates/code and APIs integration.

Open source and open standards, ideally end-user driven communities. Portability. Requiring app teams to have an data extraction strategy from day one. Don't be afraid to bring cloud concept to on-prem where it makes sense.

A3: Cost is the biggest challenge on any single cloud and gets exponential dealing across multiple clouds. Leveraging technologies proprietary to a cloud makes it very difficult to go multi-cloud. Though the capability gap has minimized not all clouds are still equal.

I'd say Cost is the effect - the challenges are mostly around either speed of operations, the NxM matrix of capabilities that someone needs to dig into, skill-set gap especially in Enterprise.

A3 Cost is something to be managed, whether on one cloud or multiple clouds. Most organizations confront higher-than-expected bills when their traditionally-designed apps confront a hosting environment designed for cloud-native architectures.

A3: Increased architectural complexity, disaster recovery planning, and security policies are just a few #multicloud challenges. #CostOptimization is absolutely a key challenge especially when cloud resources are over-provisioned, leading to wasted operational spend.

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Early to cloud customers are trying to get those apps running - so they don't feel the pain of cost as much. Minute you go past 20-30 VPCs etc - the cost suddenly shoots to the forefront.

A3: "is it worth it" This is a hard question. There is value no doubt, and often a lot of it. But is it right for you? Cost is part of it, but the opportunity cost is another. Yes it might be cheaper in my bill, but is it cheaper in my time?

A3: cost is a big one, especially with cloud application sprawl inside the organization but security is also a big one

That said - we've seen enough enterprises focus on their careabouts well. If they care about speed of operations, and getting apps to deliver on their digital experience, then cost is the price you pay for that... given current macro climate, it certainly is a big factor

@bmcsoftware agree on the complexity of the architecture, requires lots of due diligence and planning

@arnlopez - completely agree. Cost management cannot be an afterthought. Need to cost mgmt as part of design.

Q3: Cost and parity of features for products and services. e.g (1) Take Serverless, or Cloud Functions. the Dev Frameworks and tooling are all not at parity, (2) the CI/CD integrations are not consistent, (3) e.g Marketplace options have different integration models / providers

@bernardgolden Seems like there is a spectrum of responses to this that vary over the timeline of a cloud migration. Early on, the response might be "this too shall pass" but after multiple quarters of unexpectedly higher costs the patience begins to wear thin.

@bernardgolden Good point - if you're not Cloud Native, cost is likely to be an issue, regardless of multi-cloud or not

@bmcsoftware agree, we hear a lot about how Medium and small size enterprises do not want multi-cloud because of the complexity, For multi-CDN/Edge complexity outweighs the gains from reliability if one provider can offer performance and reliability the customer needs.

A4 Also understand that running an app across multiple clouds requires work beyond the app itself -- cloud infrastructure, use/rejection of cloud-specific services that require mapping/encapsulation (e.g., SQS from AWS), and storage.

@bernardgolden Plan to address all of these areas as part of an app-centric multi-cloud initiative.

@bernardgolden If the business goal is resilience, is running the app on multiple clouds really the "best" way to accomplish that outcome? Are you managing the risk of a major cloud provider losing a region or something less dire? Can you really afford to mitigate against that?

The biggest issue we see is data gravity locking into particular cloud providers. This gravity is often created before an application scales and leads to unwanted spread across clouds.

@mdcarlson Not always. this is a question of size of the enterprise as well. An S small to medium size company can get most benefits with one providers , at least in Edge Cloud Space.

Another major challenge is security. Clouds bring appealing modern identity and role-based security concepts but they break down outside of the context of a single cloud, leaving SecOps teams to solve security challenges with rudimentary security tools at cloud scale.

Q2: (1) Digital Transformation, (2) Leveraging the power of Software and (3) Developer ecosystem

@iLakshmiS What about the dev ecosystem? How is that driving multicloud?

A2: a mix of things from my perspective - avoiding vendor lock-in, need for features that a specific cloud provider excels at, geo needs, etc.

A2: Cloud competition is catching up. The "best" cloud is not as clear of an answer so putting everything in one place isnt as simple as it was a few years ago. "our software is a service AND multi-cloud" was THE Re:invent pitch from vendors.

A2: Containerization of workloads lends itself to ease of deployment in any k8s environment like GKE,EKS or Tanzu and is a key driver to growth of multi-cloud apps. Enterprises are derisking from being locked in to one cloud and are using multicloud for DR,edge and data residency

A2. Prior trends continue - industry cloud, workload specific choices (e.g. infra heavy vs analytics etc). Now increasingly cost leverage is a factor...and I think we'll see more of this in the coming months.

@codyhosterman Interesting.

A2: mix for sure but hybrid work is still very top of mind for CIOs, cloud app usage thru the roof, hard to manage and secure

A2 the ongoing shift from on-prem to cloud computing drives overall adoption and inevitably, in large enterprises, results in deliberate or inadvertent use of multiple clouds.

A2: It comes down to services that can offer speed + efficiency at optimum cost. We’ll also see data sovereignty issues becoming important & cloud providers differentiating based on geographical support.  Having options & flexibility for is key.

@ramsba - fully agree. Cost leverage is a big factor. More commitments to a single cloud means more discounts - but less choices and less efficiency. It is a balance.

i thought so! I visited a lot of booths and got the same conceptual pitch over and over. Multi-cloud was not uttered at reinvent a few years ago at all

Apps and data, as we know lead the way. As much as I'd love to say infrastructure choices (e.g. cloud networking, security) weigh in - its generally the apps and data that rule the choices

Q2: Digital Transformation: COVID has accelerated the move to Digital to every country and every industry even Cities and Public sector.

@jwittich hear the same thing, avoid vendor lock in or dependance, more flexibility

@BMCSoftware Good one - many Enterprises grappling with laws, regulations and data sovereignty. This is one that certainly comes to the forefront as it becomes a make / break decision.

@arnlopez @jwittich But can vendor lock-in even be avoided in multicloud? Once you're set up, hard to move.

speed of innovation also requires elastic use of the cloud, have to move fast to stay ahead of the competition

It is about Digital Transformation and Digital transformation is about Applications on the Internet . The differentiation comes by building the best user experience of the app or the website you have to connect with your users. This is lead by developers today.

- hard but doable. Needs to be built ground up. Cannot be an after thought.

@iLakshmiS Got it, makes sense

@BMCSoftware Yes, speed / timer to market the services and also the speed to build and deploy those services