Cloud Strategy: Get into Position

Digitization Needs a Cloud Strategy

Digitalization and cloud strategy therefore go hand in hand, and the question arises as to which cloud model best covers the company's specific requirements: a private, public, hybrid or even a multi-cloud. The current trend is towards multi-cloud approaches in which a company's required applications run on different public cloud providers. However, the term multi-cloud is often interpreted very broadly. Whether it is already multi-cloud if a company obtains Office from the Microsoft Cloud and simultaneously operates a virtual machine (VM) on Amazon Web Services is at least debatable. In any case, multi-cloud starts at the point where actual integration between different services takes place - for example, when shared authentication is used between services or services communicate seamlessly with each other in the background.

There are three aspects in particular that speak in favor of the multi-cloud: firstly, a company can use it to pursue a best-of-breed approach; for example, Microsoft Azure is even better suited for Internet of Things (IoT) applications than the Google Cloud, which scores points in other areas. Secondly, the multi-cloud choice reduces dependency on a single provider; this gives a company flexibility in the event that the terms and conditions of a service are adjusted with negative effects or a service is discontinued altogether. Thirdly, multi-cloud usage enables a combination of compliance and dynamism; companies can use specialized German providers for services with high compliance requirements and the flexible, highly scalable infrastructures of large public cloud providers for the remaining services.

Although these advantages of a multi-cloud are generally valid for all companies, they usually only really come into play for large companies. The reason: the required variety of solutions. In most cases, small and medium-sized companies focus on a clearly defined core business area. It is therefore more than unlikely that they will need ready-made IoT suites, the most developer-friendly machine learning environment and the fastest bare-metal machines at the same time as part of the digital transformation.

Consequently, multi-cloud environments are not always the best choice for small and medium-sized companies, even if they are currently the hype topic par excellence, as the IDC study “Cloud Computing in Germany” also revealed.

One result was that many decision-makers see “multi-clouds as currently the most promising approach for optimizing the required IT resources and IT infrastructures”. However, a company must not overlook the fact that multi-cloud use inevitably involves immense challenges, for example with regard to the higher administrative effort, the resulting data silos or the - to put it mildly - not entirely cost-effective movement of data between clouds. Choosing a single cloud provider is therefore the better solution if a company has a narrowly defined core business area and can cover the required services very well with a single provider; this may well also be the case for a larger company.

However, regardless of which cloud model a company prefers when implementing its digitalization strategy, one aspect always applies: there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for cloud services. As a result, companies generally need a partner who can advise them individually and develop a tailored overall concept - this is the only way to ensure a successful digital transformation.