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Living on the Edge: How Hybrid Multi-Cloud Solutions are Changing the Enterprise

Living on the Edge: How Hybrid Multi-Cloud Solutions are Changing the Enterprise Image Credit: shutter2u/Bigstockphoto.com

Where does your enterprise stand in the digital transformation process? Every enterprise, every industry, every migration is unique, but they all rely on a solid cloud strategy focused on the needs of the business, the appetite for risk, and a trust in the benefits of cloud migration. And yet, it’s also true that one constant in every case is that effective digital transformation presents a number of common challenges.

Today, transformation typically requires a hybrid multi-cloud strategy (HMC) with a mix of private and public cloud deployments delivering the best in services, security, and reliability, protecting against downtime, data loss, and unnecessary expense. Fold in some SaaS and PaaS solutions and you start to get a sense for how complex it can be to manage and optimize an HMC solution.

According to the Flexera ‘State of the Cloud’ report, 92% of enterprises surveyed are adopting a multicloud strategy, and 82% of those companies are also relying on a hybrid approach.

The benefits to your business of cloud migration are very real, including scalability, feature selection, off-loading capital expenditures, global reach, and more. However, realizing those benefits requires planning, preparation, and execution. That’s one reason why 60% of enterprises surveyed report ‘failing’ or ‘very difficult’ cloud migration projects.

So, what challenges are enterprises most likely to face throughout the digital transformation process? Fortunately, we can look to the experience of businesses that have documented the areas that enterprises need to prepare for. Let’s look at some crucial issues that are consistently at or near the top of the list for 70-90% of enterprises:

  • Performance
  • Cost
  • Security
  • Expertise

The good news is, the edge can help any enterprise overcome these challenges.

Performance

For all the benefits businesses hope to derive from cloud migration, none of them will mean very much if their application and workload performance suffers as a result. And performance can be affected at many points in the cloud infrastructure, from the network to the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) to the third parties offering XaaS services to the enterprise.

At the network level, the edge can offer a number of connectivity solutions that can accelerate and simplify access to the cloud:

  • Proximity is a key benefit to the edge data center architecture, bringing the cloud closer to enterprises and enterprises closer to their customers.
  • Direct Cloud Access offers the benefit of a direct connection on-ramp from an edge data center to a single CSP that is faster and more secure than using the public Internet.
  • SDN Cloud Access on-ramps use software-defined networking to deliver fast, secure access to multiple CSPs, allowing the enterprise to use one network solution to help deploy a multicloud strategy, using the right CSP for specific workloads.
  • XaaS Solutions at the Edge can also help cloud performance by bringing key applications into edge data centers where the volumes, variety, and velocity of data can be addressed even before traversing the network to get to the appropriate availability zones and cloud services.

Cost

A number of recent news reports have highlighted the sticker shock many enterprises encounter once their cloud migration is complete. One major contributor to these costs can be the network expenses associated with sending massive volumes of data and application requests back and forth between the enterprise and the CSP. In fact, up to 90% of the cloud costs incurred by an enterprise can be chalked up to network costs using the public Internet. Relying on the proximity of an edge data center (EDC), enterprises can realize material savings by connecting locally to the nearest EDC and then bypassing the public Internet with a direct or SDN-based cloud on-ramp connection. With this approach, the edge can help enterprises avoid surprises when the bills come in each month.

Security

This is top-of-mind for any enterprise looking to make more effective use of the cloud. Is there a trade-off required with their security posture or will they need to make compromises as so much critical business data passes from their own servers to platforms in the cloud? In an edge data center this concern can be addressed at multiple stages:

Colocation services can be secured at a location that is closer to the enterprise’s own offices than a legacy core data center built at an Internet peering point that is probably some distance away. This reduces the amount of network traffic and allows enterprise staff secure access to their servers on an as-needed basis.

In addition, and maybe more importantly, by using a direct or an SDN cloud on-ramp originating in an edge data center, the network traffic between the enterprise and the cloud is secure and less susceptible to interruption than using the public Internet. As we’ve seen above, these edge offerings can provide many benefits, but none are more important than the security and peace of mind they can provide.

Expertise

Gartner reports that, “Through 2022, insufficient cloud IaaS skills will delay half of enterprise IT organizations’ migration to the cloud by two years or more." And other analysts indicate that IT organizations can spend up to 70% of their time maintaining existing systems versus planning and executing the next generation of applications and platforms. What types of expertise are in such short supply?

  • Cloud platform expertise
  • Security expertise
  • Cloud design / architecture
  • Cloud orchestration and management
  • Cloud server and storage administration

Where can an enterprise go to find resources and guidance to address these needs? The edge is a good place to start. There are hybrid multi-cloud ecosystems that consist of services and solutions such as: Managed Service Providers, Security Solutions, Cloud Storage, Monitoring, Analytics, and more. With this type of ecosystem available in data centers, enterprises are free to focus on their own core business needs, knowing that resources with experience and a record of success can be found in one place and work together to execute on the specifics of virtually any hybrid multi-cloud strategy.

Taken together, the edge provides a comprehensive, practical, proven set of solutions to the biggest challenges facing enterprises embarking on a cloud-based business transformation. It is a model Gartner calls distributed cloud computing, adding that it is “the first cloud model that incorporates physical location of cloud-delivered services as part of its definition.”

Author

As CMO at EdgeConneX, Phillip is focused on developing, evangelizing and executing the marketing strategy and ecosystem development for the company. Phillip has over 20 years of international marketing, strategy, and business development experience working in the Data Center, Telecom and Technology sectors for leading service providers.

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