Navigate your Multicloud Journey with the Right Cloud Expertise

Contributors: David Stanford

Multicloud is the new normal. Organizations today are using two to three different clouds within their environment- a combination of public and private clouds- to optimize their IT environment, accelerate applications to market, and speed digital transformation. In fact, according to a CloudView Survey by IDC in 2018, 94% of all businesses do or plan to use a multicloud environment, which is up 10% from 2017. This depicts a significant level of cloud maturity year-on year which is good but let’s also pause for a moment to truly understand the magnitude of this multicloud evolution.

Every cloud provider has its own framework for computing resources from servers, storage, networking, software, analytics etc., to differentiated cost modules and rigorous governance and compliance parameters. When consumers opt for a multicloud strategy, essentially, they are looking to enhance business agility and increase operational simplicity with inherent end-to-end security. But the question is, how do you reap the benefits of multiple clouds when each one has its own unique operating model? How do you ensure that different clouds work together seamlessly, so you spend less time on management, and invest more time on innovation? Also, how do you ensure that your IT / engineering team is well-versed with the technical intricacies of different cloud vendors to be able to operate them efficiently and reap the most from your organization’s IT investment? It’s a double-edged sword: On one-hand, you need an enterprise-level multicloud management that can take out the complexity of working with multiple clouds and offer you ease of deployment, migration and optimization through a single pane of glass. While on the other hand, you also need the right skill-set and technical expertise that understands the operational models and cost variables of different cloud vendors to leverage them to the optimal.

For customers who need to quickly and consistently design, deploy and optimize applications across multiple clouds, irrespective of where they reside, Cisco’s newly launched CloudCenter Suite provides an application-centric multicloud management platform that securely provisions infrastructure and application resources. New feature-rich capabilities include the cost optimization feature that reduces cloud spend and increases application efficiency by right-sizing cloud instance sizes based on cloud consumption analytics. It also offers multicloud governance that enables policy-based, self-service deployment of infrastructure and applications. The CloudCenter Suite is a Kubernetes-based solution that supports 16 cloud providers – including both public and private, that work together seamlessly making it an efficient experience for IT teams and developers alike.

However, to get up and running quickly, you need the right technical expertise. This constant influx of new cloud technologies, services and platforms coupled with evolving hybrid cloud demands, has created a significant skills gap in the cloud industry today. In this multicloud world, customers are looking for cloud architects, engineers and developers who have an in-depth understanding of everything from the infrastructure to networks, and all the way to the data center and applications. Industry demands are shifting, seeking experience in DevOps, containers, microservices, Kubernetes and open-source platforms, as well as automation experience with continuous integration/ continuous delivery (CI/CD) deployments. While some organizations feel that investing in the right talent- whether internal training or external consulting and support- is an incremental cost, others realize that in the long-run, it’s actually more cost-effective and strategic to cultivate and employ the right talent from the get-go.  There’s a significant shift in the industry, where Services is no longer looked upon solely as a break-fix methodology but has evolve to become a strategic and integral part of the customers entire IT lifecycle.

Cisco Customer Experience offers for CloudCenter Suite helps accelerate the deployment process and assist with design, implementation, management, and support, so you can get the most value from your management platform quickly. We offer Quick Start Services that help you accelerate CloudCenter Suite deployment across the three-tiered software license bundles of Essentials, Advantage, and Premier. We also offer lifecycle services from Cloud Advisory, Implementation, Optimization to Technical, Training and Managed Services to support you across your multicloud adoption journey. We work with you to identify the most optimal use cases, help deploy cloud workloads for target applications, and provide testing support, knowledge transfer, and implementation project management. We also offer valuable training, an operations run-book, and centralized solution support so you can manage and scale CloudCenter Suite efficiently while innovating and maintaining governance across your infrastructure and applications. With the right expertise in place, you understand how to operate, use and adopt the technology much faster, thus spending less time figuring out operational dynamics and focusing more on quicker applications-to-market and overall customer experience.

Whatever may be your requirement – whether you are looking to deploy and manage cloud applications, optimize cloud connectivity, enable DevOps and/or deploy network and security policies etc., Cisco’s Customer Experience offers for Cloud delivers the right services’ expertise, tools and methodologies, best practices and 24/7 centralized support to guide you through your multicloud transformational journey.

For more information on Cisco’s portfolio of cloud services, click here Cloud Professional Services.

Source: IDC CloudView