Multicloud environments have become the de facto standard for contemporary IT. Most organizations leverage a variety of locations: On-premises, off-premises, public cloud, co-locations, and edge. Nearly 90% of IT decision makers say leveraging multiple cloud providers delivers strategic benefits to their organizations, according to research by TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group.1
One of the key advantages cited by IT leaders is greater flexibility in choosing infrastructure resources to meet the needs of their application environments. When IT teams can successfully optimize workloads in a multicloud environment, they can:
- Improve application performance.
- Lower consumption costs.
- Reduce IT complexity.
- Improve IT governance and regulatory compliance.
- Leverage a broader range of storage options.
- Empower developers with the tools they need where they need them.
- Avoid vendor lock-in.
Without an effective multicloud strategy, however, getting the full benefits of workload optimization can be elusive.
The Challenges of Multicloud Workload Optimization
While multicloud brings enormous business benefits, it also brings IT challenges. This is especially due to the variety, diversity, and complexity of different locations—exacerbated by the lack of interoperability and standardization among cloud services and APIs.
Per the ESG research, 82% of decision makers say they struggle to properly size workloads for the optimal infrastructure environment, on and off premises. In addition, 81% say they face challenges with application and data portability across locations, including data centers, public cloud, and edge. And 83% say the cost and time required to re-factor or re-platform applications adds significant cost, complexity, and risk to cloud migrations.
As noted by ESG: “Today’s workload environments are not only strategic; they are also distributed in a complex manner across multiple IT environments. Because every organization has its own diverse set of workloads and business requirements, a one-size-fits-all approach just won’t work.”
The answer to meeting these challenges is not to limit the variety and diversity of your IT environment. That would be going backwards and missing the opportunities of the multicloud era. No one wants that: In fact, 87% of IT decision-makers say their application environment will become further distributed across additional locations over the next two years.
Organizations above all need flexibility for leveraging the right deployment locations for their workloads. Workload deployment should always take the full context into account, which is why even “cloud first” organizations still occasionally deploy new applications on-premises. More than 40% say that decision may be related to data governance or sovereignty. Other key factors include the use of an existing onsite data set, developer preference, and total cost of ownership.
Successful multicloud demands strong partnerships across the multicloud ecosystem. The right partner can help you minimize IT complexity and maximize workload optimization across all of your environments.
What to Look for in a Partner for Multicloud Workload Optimization
When it comes to unlocking the full power of multicloud IT, the ideal approach is multicloud by design. Dell built Dell APEX to turn this ideal into a practical reality. Dell APEX offers an industry-leading as-a-service portfolio that spans from multicloud to client devices.
Dell APEX enables a wide array of benefits, including:
- A comprehensive portfolio of solutions that are agnostic when it comes to workload locations and are available across all key infrastructure environments, including public cloud, on-premises data centers, colocations, and edge.
- The ability to bring cloud-like experiences on premises and extend the benefits of on-premises offerings to public clouds. Also, the ability to extend to the public cloud the enterprise-class storage capabilities that IT teams are already using on-premises.
- Management consistency and enhanced data mobility in multicloud environments, enabling organizations to leverage existing skill sets and spend less time and money managing data and infrastructure.
Taking the Next Step
With Dell APEX, IT teams can take advantage of decades of consultative expertise as well as established partnerships across multicloud ecosystems to help ensure interoperability. Dell’s multicloud by design approach enables organizations to fully optimize their workloads while accelerating their business and IT transformation efforts.
As noted by ESG: “To efficiently navigate application deployment decisions, organizations need to work with a partner, such as Dell Technologies, that offers solutions and validated designs across the full multicloud ecosystem. APEX offers organizations simplified procurement and management experiences while increasing the agility of their IT and developmental organizations, allowing these organizations to maintain better control of their technology and intellectual property.”
For more information on how your organization can unlock the power of multicloud IT through workload optimization, please review the additional articles and resources on this site and visit Dell Technologies.
1 “Unlocking the Power of Multicloud With Workload Optimization,” TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group, May 2023
