TALKING

It ’ s important to recognise that relying on just one cloud provider increases companies ’ vulnerability to outages and exacerbates their effects .

applications and cost savings , as well as maintaining excellent customer relationships .

Diversifying your cloud approach

In order to optimise their IT infrastructure and ensure control over and uptime of their cloud resources , companies should invest time in researching the most suitable cloud approach for their individual business needs .

For many – particularly those who want to use the cloud to save costs and help them remain agile without dedicating a large IT team to managing it – a Managed Service Provider ( MSP ) who understands how to tailor hybrid- and multi-cloud solutions to these business needs while guaranteeing uptime might be a good option .

A vendor-agnostic MSP can help define a cloud strategy that allows companies to select the right cloud environments for different workloads , enhancing their overall IT operations and mitigating the effects of downtime . This also mitigates the risk of vendor lock-in , which can occur when a business becomes overly reliant on a single cloud provider , specifically the public cloud , due to compatibility constraints and migration complexities , as well as offering the end-user total control over resources and much faster customer support times , should something happen .

The right cloud combination for you

Cloud adoption is only going to continue – but the different cloud environments that organisations are considering are becoming more varied . While public cloud outages are inevitable and can have a devastating impact , which is why businesses have to find ways to mitigate the effects , it might nevertheless be useful for certain organisations to host some noncritical applications in the public cloud .

Meanwhile , IT managers need to consider running critical applications in secure , private cloud environments , where resources are dedicated to a single organisation and , if managed by the right provider , accompanied by dedicated customer support that also helps to guarantee uptime .

Ultimately , businesses use the cloud because of the flexibility , scalability and agility is offers them . Diversifying their approach and finding the cloud combination that works best for them will allow organisations to unlock its true benefits . p

40 INTELLIGENTCIO EUROPE www . intelligentcio . com