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When people think about digital transformation, they often think public cloud. However, the public cloud isnt suited to every application, or every project. There is massive appeal to the cloud experience not having to pay anything up front, only paying for what you use, and having a monthly bill that is metered up and down. It has also become impactful in this new working age of remote, hybrid, and onsite workers, where data needs to be accessible everywhere and at any time while still providing security. So, if not everything can be moved to the public cloud, how can we bring a cloud-like experience to data and applications, no matter where they are housed?

Perhaps we should stop thinking about cloud as a destination, and start thinking about cloud as an experience (or operating model) one where you can scale your technology requirements up and down on demand, and only pay for what you use. I posit that the multi-cloud experience is the next iteration of digital transformation one where data can be stored in a combination of places: public and/or private, and on premises, in colocation centres, at the edge and in the cloud while accessible through a single platform.

A decade after the public cloud emerged, more than 70 per cent of applications remain outside the public cloud due to challenges related to compliance, data privacy, latency, and app entanglement. For these workloads, the multi-cloud model will be a worthy solution, especially in an age where working anywhere at any time has become table stakes.

In the past, clients had to balance running their main business, plus managing a datacentre, and managing the real estate to house that datacentre. They had to predict their needs several years in advance of use, and pivoting for any changes was a major challenge. In the months ramping up a project, they would have costly servers sitting dormant. The RFP process could be daunting in this regard; determining needs for a project that hadnt yet started and finding ways to maximize datacentres while launching new ideas and projects.

With a decade of buzz surrounding cloud models, the technology of the past will ultimately not be replaced by public cloud on its own, but by the multi-cloud model, which will reign for the next decade at minimum. This new archetype of a mixed approach to data processing and storage that has some on premises technology for items under regulatory or latency pressures, some at the edge for example in factories, branch offices, or on distant oil rigs and some in the public cloud will prove to be the most competitive, effective, and flexible solution that organizations will adopt for their needs.

The multi-cloud model helps prepare clients for what they know they have coming and the unknowns that the future can bring. The benefits of a multi-cloud model are many, and they include:

In Canada, we have a unique opportunity to not only bring this multi-cloud approach to our clients applications and data, but to help them monetize their data in new and unique ways. By establishing their digital core in highly available real estate with global software defined interconnection capabilities, networks can be rearchitected on-demand optimizing data transmission from remote sites to cloud apps in minutes, not months.So, not only are clients experiencing a hyper scalable and metered costing system that provides them full control of their operating expenses, theyre also seeing value from data sharing at the edge.

More:
The next iteration of cloud transformation: a cloud-like experience, anywhere - IT World Canada