Multicloud Strategy: Benefits and Pillars
Key Points
- Multicloud involves using two or more cloud environments and differs from hybrid cloud, which requires workload interoperability across those clouds.
- The rise of containers and managed Kubernetes—available from major public providers and on‑premises—has accelerated multicloud adoption.
- Key advantages of a multicloud strategy include achieving ultra‑high availability, reducing latency by routing users to the nearest cloud, and enabling integrations that keep sensitive data in private environments while still leveraging public services.
- Successful multicloud adoption rests on three pillars, the first being automation: a unified control plane lets operations teams provision and manage Kubernetes clusters across clouds while developers focus on workload delivery.
Sections
- Untitled Section
- Unified Multicloud Kubernetes Control Plane - The speaker describes how a centralized control plane enables developers to deploy a Docker container to Kubernetes clusters in different clouds with a single command, simplifying automation and giving operations engineers a single dashboard for unified visibility into clusters, pods, and deployments across all clouds.
Full Transcript
# Multicloud Strategy: Benefits and Pillars **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjtdZ3gFRjU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjtdZ3gFRjU) **Duration:** 00:05:57 ## Summary - Multicloud involves using two or more cloud environments and differs from hybrid cloud, which requires workload interoperability across those clouds. - The rise of containers and managed Kubernetes—available from major public providers and on‑premises—has accelerated multicloud adoption. - Key advantages of a multicloud strategy include achieving ultra‑high availability, reducing latency by routing users to the nearest cloud, and enabling integrations that keep sensitive data in private environments while still leveraging public services. - Successful multicloud adoption rests on three pillars, the first being automation: a unified control plane lets operations teams provision and manage Kubernetes clusters across clouds while developers focus on workload delivery. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjtdZ3gFRjU&t=0s) **Untitled Section** - - [00:03:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjtdZ3gFRjU&t=184s) **Unified Multicloud Kubernetes Control Plane** - The speaker describes how a centralized control plane enables developers to deploy a Docker container to Kubernetes clusters in different clouds with a single command, simplifying automation and giving operations engineers a single dashboard for unified visibility into clusters, pods, and deployments across all clouds. ## Full Transcript
Hi, everyone.
My name is Sai Vennam, and I'm with the IBM Cloud team.
Today let's talk about multicloud.
Multicloud is a cloud computing approach made up of 2 or more cloud environments.
Let's get started.
So, we've got a public environment here as well as a private cloud.
There's an important distinction to be made here:
multicloud is not exactly the same thing as hybrid cloud.
Hybrid cloud implies that your workloads are working together across multiple clouds
- so interoperability and portability of your workloads.
Multicloud doesn't have that same requirement,
but we are seeing that a lot of enterprise users and customers
are using multi and hybrid cloud strategy together.
I'd say that the growth of containers and Kubernetes technology
has really enabled the growth of multicloud.
So, we're seeing almost every big cloud provider out there providing managed Kubernetes,
as well as it being used on-premises in the private sector
to help modernize legacy applications.
So, why would you want to use multicloud and the strategy for your cloud computing?
Well, there's a number of reasons.
For one, let's say that you want to hit that big
three-nines number as far as availability goes.
Multicloud strategy can help you hit that by ensuring that, you know, it's one thing
when the clouds of one of your application workloads stops to work you still have another
cloud that's supporting your applications.
In addition, you can enable better user experience.
So, let's say you have users on different sides of the globe.
By routing them to the cloud that's nearest to them, you can ensure lower latency and
better user experiences.
Finally, what about specific integrations that only work on a particular clouds?
Say you have some sensitive firewall data that you don't want to put in the public cloud,
but you need to build integrations for.
By taking advantage of a multicloud approach, you can build workloads on the private side
that can take advantage of that private, sensitive, customer data.
I'd say there's 3 major ways and things that you want to tackle when taking on a multicloud
strategies, and I'm gonna introduce these as three pillars.
The first one is gonna be automation.
So, to do this I, let me introduce kind two different types of users: so, we've got Ops,
as well as Devs.
So, operations engineers are going to want to be able to spin up new clusters as well
as manage and, kind of, see the different clusters that have been created.
So, they're gonna want to take advantage of a unified, kind of, dashboard to do something
like that.
So, we'll have the control plane here.
Let's say the ops engineers want to spin up two Kubernetes clusters.
So, they'll essentially figure out that configuration, and then go to the control panel, and tell
it to spin up those clusters.
At that point you know they can specify where they want those clusters to be created.
Let's say they spin up two.
Kubernetes clusters, one in each of the clouds.
On, the other side with devs, let's say that they've built out a new application, a Docker
container, and they're ready to push it.
So, they've got a container built, and they wanted to deploy it the same way to both of
the clouds but you know it can be quite difficult if they didn't have a control plane to figure
out the different authentications and configurations of the unique different clouds and kind of
deploy that both times.
In addition, this really gets in the way of traditional kind of CICD and DevOps workflows.
So, by taking advantage of that control plane, they can spin up that container in both of
the clouds with a single command.
Say that it's application 'A'.
So, I think that really hits this requirement for automation with multicloud.
The next kind of requirement that I want to hit on here is visibility.
Visibility is very important for working with multiple clouds because, you know, they each
have their own unique dashboards but to have a single unified way of managing those things
is very important.
So, for operations engineers, by taking advantage of a single control dashboard, they can have
access to a unified kind of approach and see all the different, you know, clusters that
they've spun up and even drill down deeper and see things like pods and deployments in
applications across multiple clouds.
The last thing I want to touch on, the last pillar, is governance.
These days regulatory and compliance policies are becoming increasingly strict and they
differ from geography to geography.
Let's say the operations team has a compliance policy that they want to push out across all
of these clouds.
So, first they'll have to, you know, write out that compliance policy, and then, you
know, if they didn't have access to a control plane, this can be a very kind of painstaking,
or rather time-consuming, approach.
So, by taking advantage of the control plane they can push that compliance policy across
multiple clusters with a single command and ensure those security policies for compliance
are being met.
I'd say that these are the 3 major things that you want to tackle when taking on a multicloud
strategy.
Multicloud has been a growing focus for us here at IBM.
If you want to learn more about our multicloud management strategy, check out some of the
links in the description below.
If you like this video, or have any questions, be sure to drop a comment and subscribe for
more videos like this in the future.
Thank you.