Clouds are on the horizon. No, not just outside your window, but in every corner of your business. Your business likely needs more than one cloud-based service provider. So in a multi-cloud world, where do you turn for your 30,000-foot view?
It’s the next chapter in a story that we’ve seen rapidly unfolding over the past few years, and for good reason. Cloud solutions offer clear advantages when it comes to cost, scalability and reliability. For small- and medium-sized enterprises, it’s meant hassle-free access to the newest and best cloud-based tools or freeing up precious time and IT resources previously spent on maintaining a room full of servers.
And increasingly, businesses aren’t content to settle down with just one cloud-based service provider. In a TechRepublic survey from this past June, two-thirds of respondents said their companies currently use or plan to use services from multiple cloud-based providers, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure leading the way as the most popular choices. Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud were in the middle of the pack, with IBM Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud and Fijitsu Cloud Services capturing smaller portions of the market.
That’s right -- the future is multi-cloud. And in many ways, it’s already arrived, ushering in new IT strategies, new ways of doing business and fierce competition among cloud providers.