How to Strike a Winning Balance in the Multi-Cloud Era

Multi-cloud has undoubtedly become a game-changer in today's digital world. In my previous article, we discussed how the digital era introduces an intricate paradox for business leaders, the necessity for app-centric innovation through the cloud to distinguish their companies from the competition, contrasted by burgeoning cloud expenses. As companies increasingly embrace multi-cloud platforms for their operations, this tension has amplified.

The challenges and opportunities surrounding multi-cloud strategies in an increasingly complex macroeconomic environment has been eloquently articulated during VMware’s Multi-Cloud Briefing. The briefing highlighted how IT can play a crucial role in navigating high interest rates, supply chain disruptions, and turbulent geopolitical conditions, transforming these challenges into opportunities for growth. It underscores how organizations are leveraging cloud services to drive growth while concurrently minimizing costs and risks amid the turbulence of economic challenges.

VMware stands at the forefront of multi-cloud services for all kinds of applications, propelling digital transformation while assuring enterprise governance. Their suite of solutions empowers corporations to expand and evolve, all while ensuring robust control and enhanced security. With a constant drive to tap into the latest innovations, they are dedicated to tackling the most complex problems faced by their customers through disruptive technologies such as edge computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning, Kubernetes, and beyond.

Last year, IDC ranked VMware No. 1 in worldwide cloud cost transparency. This recognition acknowledges VMware’s commitment to helping enterprises find cost-effective ways to maximize cloud usage and efficiency.

Offense and Defense: A Balanced Approach

VMware CEO, Raghu Raghuram, opened the discussion by sharing how the global economy has undergone a dramatic transformation over the last decade. Until recently, businesses have had the freedom to invest in digital transformation, which he refers to as "offense." However, recent geopolitical shocks, rising interest rates, supply chain disruptions, and the fear of recession have led to a new strategy - one that combines offense with "defense."

Offense, as Raghuram defines it, is all about accelerating digital transformation. This means building new digital applications faster, getting to the cloud quicker, and empowering employees with modern digital tools. Defense, on the other hand, is about optimizing technology spending to get the best return on investment. It involves modernizing the infrastructure in data centers, improving efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, and creating a Zero Trust model for critical applications.

Raghuram went on to discuss how VMware Cross-Cloud Services help organizations achieve both offense and defense. With three out of four modern applications built in the cloud, VMware's Tanzu and Aria portfolios allow customers to accelerate their digital transformations. Tanzu enhances developer productivity and accelerates the path to production, while Aria offers lifecycle management through observability and management tools.

The Journey to Being Cloud-Smart

The briefing also included testimonials from VMware customers who are on their journey to becoming "cloud-smart." This approach is not about blindly migrating to one cloud; rather, it involves understanding the complexity of the problem, analyzing the current position in the journey, and securing and utilizing applications effectively.

Raghuram shared an example of a large insurance company that embodies the cloud-smart approach. They have a mix of applications in the data center and the cloud, and they're using Tanzu to modernize applications while also quickly migrating a set of mid-office applications to the cloud. They're also developing new machine learning and AI-based applications natively on the public cloud, managed consistently across all platforms.

Maximizing Investment and Minimizing Cost

The briefing featured a discussion with VMware’s Purnima Padmanabhan, Sr. VP and General Manager, ModernApps and Cloud Management, and John McLoughlin, Sr. Director of Product Management, about maximizing investment and minimizing cost in a multi-cloud environment. In the wake of recent economic conditions, 2023 has become a year for enterprises to reassess their spending and optimize their resources, and this trend extends to cloud cost management.

“The rapid adoption of public cloud has introduced many opportunities, but it has also resulted in unexpected costs for companies. Greater transparency can help companies invest in the right multi-cloud strategy and technology to drive better business outcomes,” said Padmanabhan.

McLoughlin, formerly a customer before joining VMware, explained how businesses struggle to translate raw billing data into something meaningful for the business. He emphasized the importance of contextualizing and benchmarking spending against business metrics, budgets, and cost of goods sold to optimize it.

A pivotal finding from the Multi-Cloud Maturity Index, a global survey conducted by market-research firm Vanson Bourne and commissioned by VMware of nearly 6,000 organizations, echoes this viewpoint. While 95 percent of surveyed companies deem multi-cloud architectures as vital for business success, a staggering 76 percent confess they need to augment control of cloud expenses. While this further underscores that the quest to optimize cloud usage extends beyond mere technology implementation, it also reveals that the issue becomes one of leadership and organizational culture.

McLoughlin captures this sentiment well when he says, "Contextualizing cloud costs for the business as well as benchmarking to optimize is difficult from a raw billing file." This resonates with the need for leaders to adopt a holistic, long-term vision that aligns cloud investment with business objectives, rather than viewing it as a mere cost center.

Moreover, the concept of Cloud FinOps, a discipline that strives to establish a better understanding of the business impact of cloud cost, reinforces this paradigm shift. It bridges the gap between technical execution and business strategy, echoing the necessity for leaders to ensure that their technology teams and business units are aligned towards a common vision.

Strategies for Building a Resilient Multi-Cloud Environment

Building a resilient multi-cloud environment is a compelling challenge that confronts multi-cloud organizations today. Chris McCain, Technologist Director for VMware Networking and Security, articulates the need for consistency across different clouds to enhance resilience. This is akin to creating a cohesive organizational culture that maintains the same level of adaptability, efficiency, and security, irrespective of the diverse and siloed teams within an enterprise.

McCain's proposed steps for achieving a resilient architecture—designing with a security focus, deploying proactive protection, monitoring the multi-cloud environment, and establishing a fail-safe for rapid recovery—are not only technology guidelines but also leadership directives. These principles serve as a blueprint for leaders to build an organizational culture that embraces change, seeks innovation, fosters vigilance, and is resilient in the face of adversity.

Harnessing Innovation and Efficiency While Safeguarding Your Data Assets

The VMware Multi-Cloud Briefing showcased how businesses can navigate the complex macroeconomic landscape by adopting a balanced approach towards digital transformation, becoming cloud-smart, and focusing on maximizing investments while minimizing costs in a multi-cloud environment.

The framework of 'offense' and 'defense' adopted by organizations in this cloud-driven era, as described by Raghu Raghuram, reflects a poignant shift in business strategy and leadership.

Raghuram's quote: "CEOs have pivoted from primarily playing offense, where they’re driving digital transformation, to playing defense at the same time, where advancing transformation is coupled with controlling costs and security," delineates the duality of roles leaders must embrace.

This articulates the need for balanced leadership that can seamlessly synchronize the catalytic force of digital transformation with prudent financial management and robust security controls. In other words, leaders today must ensure their organizations are both change-agents and custodians in the ever-evolving multi-cloud landscape.

However, the crux of this balance lies in the culture organizations foster. An organization's culture is a reflection of its collective mindset, its responsiveness to change, and its capacity to innovate while staying resilient. While the offense mode requires an innovative and risk-taking culture, the defense demands a culture grounded in prudence, efficiency, and a strong emphasis on security. A symbiosis of these cultures is what can truly empower an organization to harness the potential of multi-cloud while remaining vigilant of its inherent challenges.

Navigating the multi-cloud era requires not only robust technological prowess but also prudent leadership and a resilient organizational culture. As companies stride forward in the multi-cloud journey, the focus must remain on cultivating leaders who can strike the right balance between offense and defense, fostering a culture that embraces innovation and efficiency, and building a resilient multi-cloud environment that safeguards their valuable data assets.

Watch the full Multi-Cloud Briefing, Navigate Economic Headwinds with a Cloud-Smart Approach.

Harold Sinnott