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“The top three challenges as outlined
in the report involve issues of security and
performance,” said Jacobsz.
“The main challenge reported by 42%
of respondents referred to applying
consistent security policies across all best of every platform, to mix together
an infrastructure specific to an individual
business depending on its organisational
goals. We have seen a rise in the number of
top-tier cloud suppliers, especially SaaS and
PaaS services, which allow an organisation
applications. Next, in second place from
40% of respondents, was another security-
related matter, involving the protection of
applications from existing and emerging
attacks. After this, it was reported that
one-third of the correspondents (33%) were
struggling with optimising the performance to take advantage of today’s advanced
cloud capabilities, without the sizeable
investments in time, energy and resources to
deploy them from scratch.
“This is why we are seeing many
enterprises today cherry-picking from
best-of-breed services across multiple cloud
providers. At the same time, this choice allows
a business to operate its multi-cloud systems
in a cost-effective way, because it can choose
to use the best and the most cost-effective
platform for specific business functions.
“Finally, when it comes to risk benefits,
remember that operating your business
using one cloud platform means that
your data is all stored in a singular place.
However, if you’re running with a multi-cloud
system, even if one host fails, the business
can still function by using another platform it
has stored in the multi-cloud system.”
Information technology industry analyst
firm 451 Research, which is headquartered
in New York, found that cloud is now
mainstream, with 90% of organisations
surveyed using some type of cloud service
and the growth of the cloud market is
expected to reach US$53.3 billion in 2021.
“Cloud buyers have access to more
offerings than ever before, and certainly this
can bring greater complexity,” added Jacobsz.
“Nonetheless, we stand on the brink
of exciting possibilities. Using a multi-
cloud arrangement offers benefits such
as improved reliability, the ability to avoid
vendor lock-in, cost savings, performance
optimisation and a lowered risk of
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
These are critical distinguishing features in
today’s digitalising economies.”
Cloud buyers have
access to more
offerings than ever
before, and certainly
this can bring
greater complexity.
of applications. The significance of the latter
is that performance is critical, because slow
or unresponsive business-related apps can
destroy productivity gains, including driving
away potential customers.
“From a security perspective, multi-cloud
allows businesses to use different hosts such
as Microsoft Azure and AWS and permits
the combination of a private or public cloud
platform. The latter means that a company
can secure its data in a private cloud, and
operate other areas of the business in a
public or hybrid cloud environment, without
being subject to vendor lock-in.
“With regards to choice, the multi-
cloud platform lets your company use the
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