Multi-Cloud Management Challenges & How to Overcome Them: Here are three issues with multi-cloud management that IT teams are currently facing, along with solutions.
We have long discussed how the cloud is the way of the future. But given that most corporate data is now kept in the cloud, it’s obvious that most companies now understand that this is essential in the very demanding and dynamic business environment of today.
Over the past two years, the cloud has served as the foundation for the remote restructuring of the workplace by allowing enterprises to access data flows and crucial workloads from any location where their employees are located. So much so that the number of businesses implementing several service providers as part of a multi-cloud strategy has dramatically increased. In a hybrid context, they can so pursue greater agility and flexibility.
According to data conducted by my own business, most IT workers use two or more cloud services platforms today, and over half (48%) claim to use a combination of public and private clouds. The truth is, though, that managing and securing your organization’s cloud environments gets more difficult the more of them you utilize. The three multi-cloud management issues that are now affecting IT teams are listed below along with solutions.
Maintaining Uptime in the Face of Rising Security Challenges – Multi-Cloud Management Challenges
Never before has avoiding downtime been more crucial or difficult to accomplish. The likelihood of natural catastrophes or power outages, which cause data loss, is rising due to the frequency of extreme weather events. In fact, 21% of U.S. and UK IT decision-makers reveal that their company had two data loss events last year, while 65% of them said their business had at least one.
The largest threat to IT staff, though, may be security issues. Organizations have been struggling with cyberattackers targeting them significantly more frequently and quickly entering them since the start of Covid-19. In 2020 alone, there were 3.1 million cloud-based cyberattacks, according to McAfee. Naturally, these attacks are raising anxiety in the IT community. In 2022, 88% of U.S. and UK decision-makers said they are at least slightly concerned about the security of cloud workloads, and 15% are extremely concerned.
Multi-cloud environments have inherent configuration and visibility issues, which presents opportunities for cyberattackers. Patching delays may also be caused by the complexity of moving data across various operating systems and cloud platforms. Frequently, preserving interoperability and ensuring visibility across various platforms are crucial. It is necessary to set up security platforms for multi-cloud systems so that providers and platforms may share threat information. If not, dangers can be easily overlooked, and even if they are discovered, the infrastructure will respond too slowly to limit harm.
A cloud-based disaster recovery strategy must be integrated into management plans as firms speed up their efforts to become 100% cloud-native in the coming years. Without one, every company runs the danger of losing crucial data and having their operations, systems, or services interrupted by natural and man-made disasters, security concerns, hardware failures, and power outages.
Staying in Front of Hidden Charges – Multi-Cloud Management Challenges
Spending on the cloud has increased dramatically over the last two years, and all indications are that businesses will continue to devote a larger portion of their IT resources to the cloud in the years to come. But not every company has the same resources as Apple, which, according to a 2019 CNBC piece, reportedly spends more than $30 million each month on Amazon’s cloud. The majority of IT teams must contend with ongoing hidden fees and unforeseen cloud expenses that could wipe out their whole IT budget.
In fact, respondents to Flexera’s 2022 State of the Cloud research reported that, up from 30% the previous year, their companies waste slightly under a third (32%) of their cloud spending. 54% of American and British IT workers claim they have experienced unforeseen cloud charges in the past year, according to research by analyticsinsight.net
It’s a serious issue that confuses IT teams at every point, from multi-cloud plans’ migration phases to management and maintenance. Sure, there are basic resources for spending insight and resource tracking provided by cloud providers like Amazon. But in all honesty, these functionalities typically fall short of offering enterprise-wide, real-time cost optimization information.
Organizations must have a clear strategy for managing cloud costs if they want to avoid the sticker shock of unexpected cloud charges. Another strategy to track spending across their many accounts is to have company-wide insight into the billing systems for their cloud platforms. Companies must correctly tag its infrastructure in order to understand expenses and keep an up-to-date inventory of all their resources.
Meeting Compliance Requirements
Following industry rules and local, national, and international legislation, each cloud user is required to adhere to specified regulatory criteria. Healthcare organizations, for instance, are required to abide by HIPAA regulations, which are essentially a set of national guidelines to prevent the disclosure of sensitive patient health information without the patient’s knowledge or agreement. Meanwhile, Manufacturing IT teams are required to follow strict PCI and PII security rules, as well as protocols for other sensitive data.
Although vital, ensuring compliance across many cloud environments is obviously difficult. This is particularly true in the attack-filled security environment of today, when internal risks can put data security at risk on a par with foreign attackers. Incorrect access authorizations and privileges issued to users were discovered by 32% of the organizations examined by Varonis. Of course, this is without mentioning the fact that compliance standards are continually shifting, making it much harder for firms to meet regulations.
CONCLUSION
To assure compliance requirements in the event of any unanticipated natural catastrophes or security incidents, every IT and security professional involved in the cloud requires a solution that enables them to set up compliance policies against their cloud infrastructure. We have witnessed the devastation that even one data breach can do to a company, spending millions of dollars in damage remediation and leaving them with significant reputational harm. They must consequently give compliance and the protection of sensitive data first priority across their whole multi-cloud strategy.