Multi-cloud is a model of cloud computing where an organization utilizes a combination of clouds—which can be two or more public clouds, two or more private clouds, or a combination of public, private and edge clouds—to distribute applications and services.
To accelerate the next phase of digital transformation, enterprises are taking advantage of multiple cloud platforms and services to:
In the multi-cloud era, IT organizations face the challenge of supporting both existing and new application architectures and workloads across all major clouds, at the edge, in co-location facilities, in sovereign environments and in their private data center. Each cloud provider, with its own operating stack, services and toolsets, delivers a unique set of capabilities that do not extend functionality to other cloud platforms. This inconsistency in cloud infrastructure and operating models places a strain on technology personnel, decentralizes IT services, and introduces complexity and risk into the environment.
Both IT and Developers cite numerous pain points in the successful operationalization of multi-cloud:
Multi-cloud services is an emerging category of software services in response to multi-cloud challenges. A multi-cloud service standardizes one or more functional areas across clouds with a consistent API, object model, identity management and other core functions and has one or more of the following characteristics:
A multi-cloud service abstracts functionality into one platform and reduces complexity compared to individually consuming the equivalent native services from multiple clouds. In this model, the public clouds and data center and edge locations are all “verticals” and the multi-cloud services are “horizontal”, providing functionality across these locations. Multi-cloud services extend and complement the native services on each cloud, while also providing consistency across clouds.
Common functions provided by a multi-cloud service include:
VMware offers an integrated portfolio of multi-cloud services and interoperable technologies focused on helping organizations maximize the business benefits of using multiple clouds across key functions:
The VMware Cross-Cloud™ services portfolio provides multi-cloud services for all apps across five flagship product families in these solution sets:
App Platform - Build and deploy cloud native apps consistently across clouds with VMware Tanzu.
Cloud Management - Operate apps and infrastructure consistently, with unified governance and visibility into performance and costs across clouds with industry-leading VMware Cloud Management solutions.
Cloud & Edge Infrastructure - Run enterprise apps anywhere with a consistent operating model across public clouds, data centers and edge environments with VMware Cloud infrastructure and services.
Security & Networking - Deliver security and networking as a built-in distributed service across users, apps, devices, and workloads in any cloud with VMware Cloud security solutions.
Anywhere Workspace - Empower employees to securely access any app on any device with VMware Anywhere Workspace services.
Organizations see many benefits when leveraging multi-cloud services to abstract core services offered by cloud providers. These include:
Build, run and manage modern container infrastructure at scale, across clouds.
Transform the way your organization operates in the cloud with a single solution for multi-cloud management and security.
Enable employees to work from anywhere with secure, frictionless access to any app on any device.