Multi-cloud scorecard for African IT managers

In the past, cloud adoption was defined by the best fit for the business with one provider. Today, companies do not need to put their eggs into one proverbial digital basket. Multi-cloud allows companies to pick the best options across cloud providers to create a cloud framework that dips corporate toes into multiple digital pools.

However, it introduces challenges. The answer lies in the following simple steps:

#1 An analysis that unpacks what workloads the organisation wants to migrate.
#2 Classify the services by asking if the software is platform-based or if it’s infrastructure.
#3 The location of the data must be navigated to ensure tight costs and even tighter controls with smooth access and compliance controls.
#4 Does the cloud provider have a presence in the region where you want to put your data. Is it just one data centre or multiple data centres?
#5 Does your business want to scale easily or is this service simply a server bolted on? This allows you to make decisions that align with growth and performance.
#6 A cost analysis is the big bell that must be rung at this point. Your ingress and egress costs, your overall costs, these must be transparent before the first step.
#7 Is your business ready to pay the costs associated with storage compute?
#8 Do you know how much it costs for your data to move smoothly between data centre, business and customer?
#9 Knowing the costs means knowing how to build the cheapest framework that delivers the best service.
#10 Compliance and data resiliency are next. How resilient is the solution you have on the table? Will it be backed up and scalable?
#11 Security and governance are critical for any multi-cloud development. You want to know if these are built into the platform and services provided.
#12 Is your role to manage and monitor data while the service provider does the rest.
#13 Avoid vendor lock-in and mitigation. Can you move your workloads? Can you move your services? Can you change your cloud provider?
#14 The final step is to unpack all this data into a decision matrix that allows you to take a clear look at every one of these points and weigh them so you can assess which cloud providers are best for your business.

It is this visibility that allows companies to thrive within a multi-cloud framework without surprises and with results.