David Behr, CEO, MTN Converged Solutions

Today, organisations are realising the value of a multicloud strategy, using two or more cloud services from different providers and spreading the workload among them. The providers might include public cloud, private cloud, or a combination of the two.

Correctly implemented, a multicloud strategy can be more cost-effective, and can de-risk the business, while making your organisation more agile, efficient, and streamlined. David Behr, CEO, MTN Converged Solutions, explains how to optimise this environment.

“The main challenges of a multicloud strategy are managing the complexity of the environment, having correct cloud governance and security in place, and dealing with the variety of tools and interfaces,” he says. “Standardisation and having a centralised management platform are essential.”

Nobody wants “bill shock” due to overconsumption of cloud services you didn’t actually need. The first step in optimising costs is to scale back during periods of lower demand; the second step is to re-architect your environment to take full advantage of the flexibility that cloud offers.

“Consumption-based cost is a fantastic system, because you never run out of capacity even at peak demand,” Behr says. “However, you have to manage the cost, and reduce your consumption as soon as demand is lower.”

Having a service provider that monitors your consumption around the clock, and can help you set limits can make a huge difference. “MTN Business can help you choose and implement the high level architecture that works best for you as the customer, whether it’s multicloud, hybrid, or private cloud, and can help you to right-size your consumption,” Behr adds.

Platform-as-a-Service works well in a multicloud environment. Using a platform like MySQL or Kubernetes makes it easier to move between different cloud environments, distributing different sections of your workload and having them running in different places.

“Having a partner with the technical skills to do the job correctly and guide you through best practices in cloud adoption is essential,” says Behr. “Getting the architecture right in the beginning makes an enormous difference, and can make your business so much easier to manage from the get-go. Just as you can have ‘cable spaghetti’ with racks of on-premise equipment, so you can have exactly the same situation if cloud is implemented incorrectly, and it can be just as complex to unravel and fix.”

Cloud network structure can’t be configured in the same way as on-premise was. It needs to be rearchitected or you will be adding unnecessary latency and cost. Containerising your applications will allow you to run the workloads where they need to be. Some can be run locally, others in different clouds. A modular approach allows you to be flexible and agile.

Security across multiple cloud environments can be complex to manage. “In cloud, your attack surface area increases, and you have to be sure your security is top-grade. Multifactor authentication is an essential. Every person needs to use a different password for every service – no shared passwords. The current wisdom is to use simpler, longer passwords. Also, don’t have password expiry rules in place. There’s nothing wrong with continuing to use a good, secure password, and it helps to minimise complexity,” Behr advises.

MTN Business offers customised assessment and planning in cloud migration for organisations of all sizes and across all industries. We help with vendor selection and integration, facilitate your migration and deployment, provide management and monitoring tools, and offer ongoing training and support. Whether you are a larger organisation, or a SMME, our knowledge and connections in the ICT space, and our strong pan-African network, can help you create the right cloud solution for your needs.

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