Page 24 - FCW, August 2021

Maximizing the Benefits of Multi-Cloud
Raising multi-cloud management to the
next level
Patrick Thomas
Cloud Technologist, Dell Technologies
In the past, when agencies acquired the components of a network, they paid for the entirety of that system at acquisition time. In the early days of virtualization, they could buy a server and pack as many as 100 virtual machines into it — all for the cost of the server.
When agencies work with hyperscalers, they pay for a cloud instance, but even though that instance is using virtualization, the agencies do not receive the benefit of packing workloads into that resource. Say an agency buys a virtual machine through a subscription and it’s running at 20% utilization. In a public cloud, the remaining
80% is not usable by anything but that instance. Those resources are captive and cannot be shared.
By contrast, in a private cloud, the agency is the provider, so it can take full advantage of the benefits of virtualization. With either approach, though, agencies need to understand and then right-size their cloud utilization.
Making strategic choices about cloud funding Agencies should also take a fresh look at their cloud funding models. Beyond the total cost of ownership, they need to reevaluate how they pay for cloud products and services. They can choose to treat that spending as a capital expenditure (CapEx), which typically has a higher cost of ownership, or as an operational expense (OpEx).
Agencies have the opportunity to mature their approach to deploying and funding cloud environments
TECHNOLOGY IS NEVER STATIC, and that’s especially true of cloud. Even as agencies move into multi-cloud environments, products and services continue to change and improve. To keep up with all those advances, agencies need to take their management practices to the next level.
Many agencies are using cloud the way they used non-cloud data centers 15 or 20 years ago. But instead of customizing their cloud environments, they should use tools like Terraform, Juju or Pulumi to create, deploy and manage infrastructure as code on any cloud and then enable automation and
orchestration in their cloud platforms. In addition to using predetermined,
software-defined configurations for cloud deployments, agencies should develop a more strategic approach to funding their multi-cloud environments.
Public versus private virtualization
Many agencies go to a public cloud expecting the same level of efficiency
they had with their previous data center purchases, but it’s important to note that there are major differences between private and public clouds.
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