Challenges and Solutions in Multi-Cloud Networking

These days, it's common practice to see enterprises applying multi-cloud strategies to leverage the positive aspects of one cloud service provider against another. Such strategies will see a business advanced in flexibility, responsiveness, scalability, and cost-effectiveness while totally bypassing vendor lock-in with access to best-in-class services on different platforms. Nevertheless, that very strategic alignment poses no small challenges, especially around how those businesses will connect their very own enterprises in, out, and around those multi-cloud environments. With the expansion of enterprise IT over cloud environments, managing network traffic and making sure different systems keep on working properly keeps becoming more complex. This article here discusses timing challenges around performance in the multi-cloud networking space and some alternative solutions designed to address those challenges and, finally, get enterprises moving on their multi-cloud service.

Key Challenges in Multi-Cloud Networking

Network Complexity

Multi-cloud environments are inherently complex, representing a huge hurdle for businesses that seek to leverage multiple cloud vendors for value. Each cloud platforms have their own networking architecture, protocols, and security parameters, resulting in a fragmented landscape that will hinder seamless communication and optimum performance.

Real examples are insight into how, for example, the complexity of a network can intrude into and influence other processes within an organisation. A financial services firm, for example, may experience delays in certain business processes-perhaps, among others, transaction processing or customer relationship management-as the data is transferred between cloud services. In other words, such delays can be very detrimental in real-time-sensitive environments such as trading.

Security and Compliance

One of the most serious challenges for enterprises with multi-cloud strategies is to achieve consistent security and compliance in the multiple cloud environments. Each one possesses its own security standards, compliance certifications, and regulatory criteria. For example, a healthcare company using multiple clouds will comply with such strict regulations as HIPAA for protecting sensitive patient data. All of these require a holistic security posture across all cloud platforms.

The demands of aligning security policies across multiple cloud environments can create weaknesses. A breach in one environment could just as well expose sensitive data on another if security measures were uniform.

Solutions to Multi-Cloud Networking Challenges

Fortunately, there are innovative solutions that can help organisations overcome the challenges of multi-cloud networking.

SD-WAN

SD-WAN technology is a viable solution to the problems of multi-cloud networking. In SD-WAN, policy-based centralized control is used to route traffic and adapt to the highest-performing path for that traffic in real time. This makes it much easier to manage and optimize application performance. SD-WAN has a big advantage over others in that it operates effectively at the overlay level on what else could be physical connections, thus making it easier for IT professionals to bootstrap remote cloud environments in the easiest way possible while controlling or giving priority to certain flows of traffic.

Still, for example, a financial services corporation with a truly global agenda can use SD-WAN to give secure and reliable communications among its on-premises network, a public cloud for client data, and a private cloud in which sensitive financial work would be conducted. Likewise, a global e-commerce company may optimise the multi-cloud strategy through the use of SD-WAN to route user traffic to the nearest data centre, lowering latency and improving user experience.

Network Function Virtualization (NFV)

NFV is a very adaptive and effective method of controlling multi-cloud networks. Organisations that have virtualised network operations for functions like firewalls, load balancers, etc. can dynamically deploy and scale them across their multi-cloud infrastructure as per their business requirements. This incredibly provides elastic responses to the business demands that provide faster reaction times and optimise network performance for such businesses.

That is, a media company could use NFV to increase its load balancing capacity on the spot for highly trafficked events such as live streaming. Same, a telecom operator would be able to improve multi-cloud networking capabilities by incorporating NFV so that they can respond to fluctuations in demand from its customers without incurring significant capital expenses on equipment.

Best Practices for Multi-Cloud Networking

Beyond these specific solutions, some best practices can further enhance the success of your multi-cloud networking strategy.

Centralized Network Management

To succeed in controlled multi-cloud environments, investing in centralised network management technologies is very important. The solutions give a reflective and consolidated view internally across various cloud environments, which help IT personnel pinpoint potential bottlenecks, create a direct resolution plan to address these issues in real-time, and keep an eye on the health and security of the multi-cloud network.

Conversely, a global retailer designed a consolidated management tool that unified its cloud services and allowed IT professionals to easily identify bottlenecks and dynamically reallocate resources, which led to better overall performance and less downtime.

Network Optimisation

Maximising the performance of the network is a mandatory axis of multi-cloud networking. Traffic engineering, load balancing, and caching could mutually bolster a much better end-user experience by ensuring that applications run well even at peak times. Traffic engineering describes the direction of data through the best pathways, while load balancing distributes the traffic uniformly among the available resources. Caching frequently accessed data close to the user deals with latency, making the applications feel faster.

A good example of all these solutions in action is a video streaming service that was heavily affected by heavy buffering during peak hours. Clever caching and load balancing into the multi-cloud infrastructure drastically reduced latency and enabled customers to binge-watch without so much as a pause during peak prime-time traffic.

The multi-cloud revolution opens up great choices for enterprises, but it has a very complicated networking landscape that needs thoughtful consideration in order to steer smartly. You will experience issues in management of diverse settings and uniformity of security; however, strategic vision and adopting proper tools will let you sail through easily.

Such a strategy gives businesses the opportunity to profit from multi-cloud implementation, including flexibility, control, and scalability with SD-WAN and NFV approaches, along with effective practices in network administration and optimisation. This means an environment to be secure, reliable, and high performing; one that bodes well for prosperity in business.

Remember this: proactive planning is the way. Anticlockwise is a team of experts in the network management field who will take you along the multi-cloud journey. Our team can assist.

Do not face it alone; call Anticlockwise to harness the full potential of multi-cloud. Contact Anticlockwise to maximise the potential of your multi-cloud approach.