The future of enterprise is a multi-cloud strategy

When you finally decided to migrate to the cloud, did you spend countless hours researching platforms to choose the one that would be best for your business? We won’t say it was a waste of time, but we will tell you that you didn’t necessarily have to narrow it down to just one. There is a way where utilizing a multi-vendor cloud strategy with AWS and SoftLayer is an option.

See, it’s possible to host your clouds on multiple vendor platforms. So, for example, you could have storage with one provider, use another for computing and a third to store databases. Why would anyone want to do this? Well, for a number of reasons:

1. Flexibility to choose between the unique strengths of individual cloud providers and pick the right tools for each job
2. Potential cost savings
3. Avoid getting “locked in” to one platform that may fail (remember when Nirvanix closed?)
4. Be up all the time, even when one provider isn’t
5. Enhanced application fault tolerance and availability
6. Keeping vendors honest and competitive
7. Disaster recovery

Not an Either-Or Scenario

So how does this thinking apply to your business? It’s not about choosing AWS or Softlayer. It’s about creating a broadly based solution that uses the safest, smartest and most cost effective technologies.

Case in point, SoftLayer give its clients free reign over their raw computing power and server configuration, eliminating any loss of performance due to hypervisor issues. The AWS option, although it does not operate at the data center level, gets you up and running quickly with the ease of automation and allows customer control over the resources.

And while you can achieve certain goals with one or the other, a fully defined, multi-vendor cloud strategy is the best option to ensure that safety and guaranteed performance occurs. Of course, understanding the benefits of using AWS and SoftLayer together and determining how this applies to your business can be confusing.
As a business owner, it’s likely that you don’t have the time to spend mapping out a multi-vendor strategy. And while your IT Department may be staffed with a select group of adept professionals, the time and expertise necessary to implement and manage a multi-vendor cloud strategy can take them away from focusing on the onsite technological needs of your company and employees.

Consider a Cloud MSP

Once you’ve made the decision to move to a multi-vendor cloud strategy, utilizing an MSP (Managed Service Provider) or CSP (Cloud Services Provider) is the ideal route to take. A CSP not only has the resources and technological capabilities to deliver and manage multiple cloud services, they have the knowledge and expertise to ensure that you get the best of both AWS and SoftLayer to perfectly suit the needs of your company.

Whether you need EaaS (Encryption as a Service), IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), TaaS (Tokenization as a Service), when you provision these services through a CSP, you will have an end-to-end solution that maximizes the capabilities of each of the cloud vendors.

It’s Greek To Me!

And if all of this seems like Greek to you, all you really need to consider is what your organizational needs are, how you want to utilize the cloud and what results you’re looking for. And of course, the security of your data.

Your CSP is in business to ensure that you maximize the cloud’s potential and maintain a secure environment for your business there. So whether your company is using a cloud environment for high performance workloads (such as web apps) or because you require database back-end systems, a multi-vendor cloud strategy makes solid sense.

The question isn’t whether your company should migrate to the cloud with a multi-vendor system, but when. Many organizations wait until a disaster or loss of data occurs. But you’re not that foolish, right?