3 Methods Toward Managing Multi-Cloud Complexity

Martin Hingley, President and Market Analyst at IT Candor Limited, and Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, recently examined how artificial intelligence, orchestration, and automation are helping tame complexity brought about by continuous change.

Management complexity is especially difficult for larger organizations because they have such a huge mix of resources. “Cloud hasn’t helped,” Hingley explained. “Cloud is very different from your internal IT stuff — the way you program it, the way you develop applications. It has a wonderful cost proposition, at least initially. But now, of course, these companies have to deal with all of this complexity.”

Massive amounts of data

Additionally, consumers and businesses create massive amounts of data, which are not being filtered properly. According to Hingley, “Every jetliner flying across the Atlantic creates 5TB of data; and how many of these fly across the Atlantic every day?” In order to analyze this amount of data properly, he suggested we need better techniques to pick out the valuable bits of data. “You can’t do it with people. You have to use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).”

Hingley emphasized how important it is to get a handle on your data – not only for simplicity, but also for better governance.  “The challenge is that you need a single version of the truth. Lots of IT organizations don’t have that. Data governance is hugely important; it’s not nice to have, it’s essential to have.”

Software-defined and composable cloud

Organizations will also need to create a common approach to the deployment of cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud, thereby simplifying management of diverse resources. As an example, Gardner mentioned the latest composable news from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

Announced in November 2018, the HPE Composable Cloud is the first integrated software stack built for composable environments. Optimized for applications running in VMs, containers, clouds, or on bare metal, this hybrid cloud platform gives customers the speed, efficiency, scale, and economics of the public cloud providers. These benefits are enabled through built-in AI-driven operations with HPE InfoSight, intelligent storage features, an innovative fabric built for composable environments, and HPE OneSphere, the as-a-Service hybrid cloud management solution.

 “I like what HPE is doing, in particular the mixing of the different resources,” Hingley said. “You also have the HPE GreenLake model underneath, so you can pay for only what you use. You have to be able to mix all of these together, as HPE is doing. Moreover, in terms of the architecture, the network fabric approach, the software-defined approach, the API connections, these are essential to move forward.”

Automation and optimization across all of IT

New levels of maturity and composability are helping organizations attain better IT management amid constantly changing and ever-growing complex IT environments. Gaining an uber-view of IT might finally lead to automation and optimization across multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, and legacy IT assets. Once this challenge is conquered, businesses will be better prepared to take on the next one.