There are a number of reasons for an enterprise to adopt a multi-cloud strategy. Deploying applications and resources where they will perform optimally and avoiding vendor lock-in are the most obvious. But one that is often overlooked is migration by necessity – you must support multiple clouds because developers are going to use multiple clouds, no matter what.
It’s not DevOps’ fault; developers are under pressure to drive innovation within the organization and get things done quickly. Unfortunately, ITOps also has a lot on their plate, and they can’t always resolve developer requests in a timely manner. If a developer needs a cloud tool or resource and IT can’t get it to them quickly, the developer can easily procure what they need on their own with a credit card. And developers will likely use whatever works best for their purposes, which could come from different cloud providers.
Soon enough, you have dozens of fragmented developer groups within your organization, each using a patchwork of cloud-native tools, third-party solutions, homegrown scripts and spreadsheets, without any oversight or control from IT or anybody else in the organization. You’re now a multi-cloud organization whether you intended it or not.
Developers going around IT and procuring their own clouds, tools and resources is very common, and is referred to as “shadow IT.” The proliferation of shadow IT creates problems for ITOps, SecOps and FinOps.
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- ITOps can’t see and doesn’t know about the things DevOps is spinning up on their own, so governance becomes impossible.
- SecOps can’t build security into all of the different tools and apps being used, or monitor them for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. Sixty-five to 70% of all cloud security issues start with a misconfiguration. When new tools and resources are added that don’t fall under existing policies and are provisioned in ways that IT didn’t foresee, that’s a recipe for misconfigurations, creating security risks.
- FinOps doesn’t have visibility into the amount of workloads and cloud spend across all departments, so they cannot track and aggregate cost and usage information. Gartner even estimates that shadow IT accounts for 30-40% of all enterprise IT spend.
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You can’t manage, monitor, secure, automate or optimize what you can’t see. A multi-cloud strategy with an overarching framework that can accommodate whatever cloud, tool or app you want to use can eliminate the problem of shadow IT. With a multi-cloud framework that supports any public cloud, private cloud or on-prem system, you gain the 360-degree visibility and interoperability you need to put DevOps, ITOps, SecOps and FinOps on the same page.
All cloud tools and resources can be kept in a single repository that’s easily accessible and viewable to all. This enables true self-service IT without forcing anyone to be an expert in any cloud or tool. Whatever developers need – compute, storage, a simple instance to demo a product – they can access it with push-button controls. You don’t have to wait on IT for things if you can access them yourself.
Integrations and other resources can be reused across teams, with insights and best practices from each department being shared and utilized by everyone. The time savings alone from not having to reinvent the wheel every time a tool or resource is adopted significantly increases efficiency and drives innovation. The less time you have to spend trying to figure out how things work, the more time you have to be creative and find new ways to help customers.
SecOps can enhance security without inhibiting speed or innovation. With visibility into everything that’s being integrated, SecOps can build security into apps and tools as they’re adopted and remediate security issues when they arise. Automatic security and compliance checks can be run every week, day, or even hour. Your security and compliance posture can be viewable 24/7 from a single pane.
FinOps gains the visibility they need to track and optimize cloud spend across all departments. Rather than relying on a collection of static views of isolated teams, they have end-to-end visibility of all cloud resources and configurations. They no longer have to remind human beings to take cost-saving actions and manually check off recommitments with spreadsheets. Full visibility and interoperability enable automated guardrails and policies.
A multi-cloud strategy empowers enterprises to leverage a comprehensive cloud framework that harmonizes every facet of their cloud ecosystem. When your framework is built to unify fragmented development teams and seamlessly integrate cloud tools, apps and resources from any provider, you will be able to stay ahead of the rising costs and growing complexity of the new cloud order.
