Everything You Need To Know About Multi-cloud Architecture

Introduction 

According to Gartner, Inc., enterprise IT spending on public cloud computing will surpass traditional IT investments in various market segments in 2025. Gartner’s ” cloud shift ” research includes only cloud-compatible IT categories within the markets for application software, infrastructure, business process services, and system infrastructure are included in Gartner’s “cloud shift” research. By 2025, 51% of IT investment in these four categories—up from 41% in 2022—will have moved from traditional solutions to public clouds. By 2025, 65.9% of the money spent on application software will go toward cloud technologies, up from 57.7% in 2022. 

It is inevitable that the digital transformation of businesses will continue in the coming years as organizations migrate their legacy applications into modern environments, which often require extensive refactoring. 

What Is Multi-cloud Architecture? 

Before we understand what multi-cloud architecture is, we need to understand what cloud architecture is. 

Cloud Architecture 

Cloud architecture integrates individual technologies to create an IT environment in which scalable resources can be abstracted, pooled, and shared across a network. As a matter of fact, cloud architecture refers to the way a series of components and capabilities are combined to deliver an online platform on which you can run applications to build a cloud. 

Think of cloud infrastructure as the materials used in building a house, while cloud architecture is the blueprint used to build the house. 

Multi-cloud Architecture 

Multi-cloud architectures bring together services from several cloud providers to create a valuable combination of business benefits, including spurring innovation, enabling access to hardware that is not available on-premises and scaling compute and data storage as the business grows and expands. Multi-cloud strategies can be conceived as a mix of public and private clouds (hybrid clouds) or as a mixture of multiple public clouds. 

Multi-cloud design architectures provide a high level of resiliency. You can make use of the characteristics of cloud computing environments to maximize efficiency by deploying applications in a distributed manner, utilizing the characteristics of cloud computing environments. In order to achieve the best possible outcome, it is best to utilize different clouds and services, tailoring applications to meet their inherent strengths. There are many benefits to leveraging a cloud for specific workloads, such as leveraging the better GPUs on 1st cloud and leveraging the best-of-class analytics engine on 2nd cloud. 

A redundant multi-cloud architecture may also be created by deploying the same application on a variety of different cloud services at the same time. 

Understanding The Different Types Of Multi-cloud Architecture 

It is important to use a multi-cloud architecture design when building reliable applications. Providing architectural guidance for cloud systems that run on different cloud environments, such as various independent clouds, is our aim in facilitating cloud migrations. We will take an in-depth look at the most prominent multi-cloud architecture that is available today. 

Types of Multi-cloud Architecture 

Cloudification 

The application component of this architecture resides on-premises, so after migration, the application components can tap into the cloud services of different cloud platforms to enhance the application’s performance. 

Currently, the application component is hosted on-premises, but now that it has adopted multi-cloud, it makes use of services from the Amazon Web Services AWS S3, as well as Azure virtual machines for computation. 

Benefits: Cloudification’s benefits are improved availability and reduced vendor lock-in through multi-cloud and re-hosting applications. 

Multi-cloud Relocation 

This architecture consists of re-hosting the application components in the cloud and leveraging the cloud services of multiple cloud platforms to enhance the application’s capabilities. 

After the migration of the application component, it is being re-hosted on AWS and can use the Azure environment services as well. The application uses Amazon Web Services S3 for storage, and it has the option of using either Amazon Web Services or Azure for computation. 

Benefit: It’s a great way to improve your application’s availability by rehosting it in various cloud platforms so that you don’t get locked into one vendor. 

Multi-cloud Refactoring 

A multi-cloud platform deployment of an on-premise application was re-architected in order to provide improved Quality of Service for our users. It is important to re-architect this application as fine-grained components so that optimization and deployment of components with high usage can be performed independently on the different components. It is important to note that deployments of high-use components are optimized for low-use components in this case. By using a parallel design, multi-cloud platforms are able to achieve better throughput. 

There are two components of the application, AC1, and AC2, which were originally hosted on-premise before the migration. Since both components are independent integrity units, AWS S3 is used to deploy AC1 as both components are independent integrity units. Furthermore, AC2 is deployed on Azure, and if required, it can use any Azure cloud service per its requirements. 

Benefit: The ability to respond to business or IT changes with agility, optimal scalability, and performance, as well as a variety of multi-cloud deployment options. 

Multi-cloud Rebinding 

In the re-architected application, the application is embedded partially in various cloud environments, which allows the application to keep functioning even if a failure occurs with the primary platform and the secondary deployment takes over. 

The two application components, AC1 and AC2, have been hosted on-premises before being migrated to the cloud. It is vital to note that AC1 and AC2 are independent integrity units, which means that AC1 is to be deployed on-premises, and AC2 is to be deployed on AWS or Azure for disaster recovery purposes. EBS or the Service bus connects the AC1 and the two AC2 components. 

Benefits: By restoring the health of unhealthy services, traffic can be delivered again, issuing a boost to the system’s responsiveness. 

Multi-cloud Rebinding With Cloud Brokerage 

As part of the re-architecture project, a part of the application is deployed in multiple cloud environments. It is possible to continue to run the application in the event of a failure of the primary platform of the application while the secondary deployment continues to function using cloud brokerage services. 

It is envisaged that AC1 will be deployed on-premise, while two re-architected AC2 will be embedded on two cloud platforms, Azure and AWS, respectively. In this scenario, cloud broker services can integrate all three components and provide flexibility in choosing services from multiple cloud providers (AWS and Azure cloud platforms). 

Benefits: The healthier the services become, the more traffic can be delivered, thus restoring the maximum level of responsiveness to the system as a whole. 

Multi-app Modernization 

It is necessary to re-architecture the existing on-premise applications A1/A2 and AC1 in order to deploy them on the cloud platform as part of a portfolio. 

Benefits: In shared components, it provides a consistent set of rules and information. In addition, the cost of operating and maintaining shared components will be reduced as well. 

Why Multi-cloud Architecture Makes Perfect Sense Today? 

Multi-cloud strategies provide organizations with a wide range of options to choose from. The more options you have, the more likely you are to invest in digital transformation without becoming locked into a single service or having to incur a huge capital expenditure. Multi-cloud offers the following benefits in particular: 

• Increased ROI: Stakeholders can choose what cloud solution works best for their organization as part of a multi-cloud approach. Businesses can allocate resources to different cloud providers as their business requirements expand and become more complex, maximize those resources, and pay only for what they use as they grow. 

• Reliable architecture: A single point of failure can be reduced by using multiple cloud solutions. A single service failure in a multi-cloud environment reduces the likelihood that the entire enterprise will go offline. Through hybridization, sensitive data is kept on a secure, local network, adding another level of security. 
• Advanced security: In the same way as hybrid clouds, multi-clouds enable organizations to optimize their computing resources while maintaining strict security compliance. Additionally, multi-cloud technology protects mission-critical applications from DDoS attacks. With advanced cloud security protocols, organizations can lose thousands of dollars in just one hour of downtime. 
• Freedom of choice: Providing all the computing services an organization needs may not be possible through a single cloud provider. Vendor lock-in may also worry many financial stakeholders. Business owners may have trouble moving away from architectures designed from scratch for another provider’s cloud environment if they discover a better deal with another provider. 
• Better disaster recovery: Generally, it is very unlikely that multiple cloud vendors will experience concurrent delays or outages at the same time. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform are some service providers with service-level agreements in place to ensure that clients are protected against downtime when using their platforms. Using two or more of these services together, it is possible to significantly reduce the risk of disaster and improve the organization’s business continuity. 

Conclusion 

Businesses are able to build secure and powerful cloud environments outside of traditional infrastructure by utilizing a multi-cloud architecture. It is imperative, however, to overcome the challenges of app sprawl, migration, unique portals, security, and compliance to maximize multi-cloud impact. 

A multi-cloud strategy uses as many clouds as required to address the limitations of using one cloud from one provider. Cloud service providers are developing methods to make switching clouds increasingly efficient, even though switching between clouds can be tricky. Multicloud computing will become more prevalent as it becomes more efficient. 

So you are now aware of what multi-cloud architecture is. If you are willing to brush up on your concepts, you must check out out our UNext website for various cutting-edge certifications in Business Analytics, Cybersecurity, etc.