How Data Agility Can Improve Business Productivity
Most companies have complex cloud arrangements. Here in 2021, virtually every company uses cloud-based solutions as part of their workflow. However, of these, a sizable percentage use a multi-cloud or hybrid approach, eschewing the idea of one-cloud-fits-all in favor of chopping and changing between multiple vendors.
There are multiple reasons why this might be the case. Multi-cloud infrastructure is adopted by many organizations seeking reduced costs and vendor-specific optimizations. Different clouds may be suited for different tasks, such as having high-risk workloads kept on private clouds and lower-risk ones on public clouds.
Companies may also adopt a multi-cloud approach so as to be able to pick and choose what they like about different cloud offerings (without really having to choose between them). They may, for instance, want the enterprise applications of Azure, the enterprise resource planning (ERP) of Oracle Cloud, the machine learning capabilities of Google Cloud, the different services offering of Amazon Web Services (AWS), and so on.
It additionally means not being reliant on just one vendor, thereby protecting against possible issues, while avoiding vendor lock-in.
All of these explanations may sense on a business level. But it also means that companies have data and applications that are scattered across multiple vendors. Since enterprise agility relies on data agility, that can prove to be a challenge. That’s where the Silk platform can help.
Headaches in the multi-cloud environment
Some challenges in the hybrid or multi-cloud environment may include taking the output from one cloud provider’s service and using it as an input for another’s, safely writing and reading the same data sets over multi-cloud providers, and more. Many businesses that have jumped quickly from cohesive legacy systems they have been relying on for years to multi-cloud environments may not be fully prepared for the scope of the challenge at hand.
There are multiple difficulties enterprises might encounter — from issues around optimal infrastructure for running applications to dilemmas involving the toughness of moving data in vendor-specific storage.
Data duplication is a major source of expense. Large data sets are also costly to move or migrate, and can thereby result in being used in suboptimal conditions with one cloud provider over another for purposes of ease. (This effect is sometimes referred to as “data gravity.”)
One other big common issue involves the fact that applications and the data that they need may not be co-located. Silos are a big headache in multi-cloud environments. Although these existed in the traditional world of on-premise storage in which enterprise applications and data were spread across various servers that didn’t easily interact, the problem has become even more severe in the multi-cloud environment.
An approach that “just works”
Even with these challenges, many businesses will still — for the reasons outlined above — opt for a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud setup. While there is not necessarily anything wrong with multi-cloud environments, it is essential that the pieces properly fit together, with all parts integrating effectively. This is sometimes referred to as the need for a “single pane of glass” for customers.
Silk helps improve business productivity in the cloud by providing vital data agility. Silk can negate cloud lock-in while making refactoring — the process of having to re-architect apps to better suit the cloud — a thing of the past. It makes it easier to move databases from one cloud to another or even from on-premises storage to the cloud and vice-versa.
Silk will help you move databases from zone to zone and region to region in a way that’s almost impossibly straightforward. In short, it offers platform-agnostic solutions for storage that make it possible for data to go wherever it is needed. This all “just works” while simultaneously offering unmatched consistent performance across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, whichever cloud platform you choose.
The cloud should be there to help, not hinder
Ultimately, the cloud should be there to help make life easier for companies. That is what Silk has focused its efforts on, ensuring organizations’ cloud infrastructure adapt to its business needs — and not making businesses slave to the platforms that they’ve chosen to adopt.
Whether it’s a single, hybrid, or multi-cloud model, cloud technology can help make organizations more agile and competitive. As businesses scale their cloud focus, make sure you make the right decisions so as to get the best the cloud has to offer, without struggling with the big challenges along the way.
