Multi-Cloud Use Maturity – Tools and Platform Standardization

This blog on Cloud Tools and Platform Standardization represents part 7 of a multi-part blog series on multi-cloud use maturity. A comprehensive eBook that includes the entire multi-cloud use maturity framework can be found here. At the end of this blog, you can also find links to all the prior blogs in this series.

In a multi-cloud world – complexity is the enemy

Until recently, most teams that were responsible for app dev and IT operations were mono cloud in their orientation to the public cloud. They were using a single cloud exclusively or almost exclusively to support the applications for which they were responsible. Today more and more these teams are beginning to look at building and running applications across more than one cloud.

In the early days of cloud, the agility that the public cloud brought to the organization was enough. No one worried about or asked a lot of questions about whether operations were efficient. It was enough that the ability to produce software that the business needed had been dramatically accelerated. But as these teams begin to seriously look at building and running applications on more than one cloud they are finding that not only does the complexity of working across multiple clouds lead to huge inefficiencies, it also undermining the agility gains they experienced when they first embraced the public cloud.

Not just agility – agility and efficiency

Public cloud has now been a stable feature of the IT operating landscape for over a decade. It is a fundamental part of how teams build and run their applications. Today, senior business and IT leaders no longer look at the cloud as if it were a novelty. They rightfully are looking to add efficient operations to the list of benefits they associate with the cloud. They also want to maintain the agility gains they have already achieved.

The challenge these leaders face as they move to multi-cloud is that today each cloud is an operational silo. Each cloud has a different operating model, a unique set of APIs, and a unique set of semantics to name just a few of the major differences. To get more operating leverage, organizations will need to begin to adopt technologies that can run across more than one cloud environment. The three technology areas below can be the foundation of a standardization strategy that will support skill leverage and the ability to build common processes across multiple clouds.

Operationally centric tools that can be used across clouds
Development-centric tools that can be used across clouds
An infrastructure abstraction that can be used across clouds

Top of mind concerns

In a global VMware Market Insights study that we conducted earlier this year, we found that all three of these strategies had significant mind share among app dev and IT leaders. That survey found that more than half of all respondents indicated that these strategies were being pursued within their organizations.

In terms of assessing multi-cloud maturity for this area, organizations should consider where they are with the adoption and use of strategies and technologies that simplify multi-cloud through standardization. A high degree of maturity would be in evidence if consolidation in all of these three technology categories was well underway across a majority of teams using the cloud.