A primer on cloud-agnostic strategies

What are cloud-agnostic strategies?

As the cloud computing space constantly evolves, a massive variety of cloud products and services are being provided. Naturally, organizations would want to make the most of these newly launched capabilities to take their business to the next level of success. Unfortunately, most organizations that embrace any cloud framework find it extremely difficult to switch to another. Such was the nature of cloud computing until now.

As the need for different cloud types and services increases, cloud-agnostic strategies are on the rise as they eliminate the problem of vendor lock-in. Cloud-agnostic strategies, which spread across multiple cloud providers and vendors, enable organisations to use services from different clouds without being locked into the proprietary services of a single vendor or provider.

Why do organizations need cloud-agnostic strategies?

Spreading services across different cloud providers is not just to avoid the problem of vendor lock-in; it also plays a crucial role in ensuring the uptime of critical applications. For organizations that need their core services to be fail-safe, being cloud-agnostic allows them to ensure high availability while driving better business continuity.

Unlike cloud-native applications that are designed to run on a single platform, cloud-agnostic applications can easily be moved around to different cloud platforms, providing organizations with more choice and flexibility in how their workflows, workloads, or instances are run.

Irrespective of what environment they use, they can be sure to make full use of built-in redundancies, should a problem arise, and have their applications performing optimally.

What are the potential drawbacks?

While a cloud-agnostic strategy provides organizations with several benefits, it’s also critical to be cautious about potential drawbacks. Since services are shared or transferable across multiple cloud providers, organizations might not be able to take full advantage of the best-of-breed services of each cloud provider, slowing down their pace of innovation while putting their competitors at an advantage.

For instance, if a cloud provider offers a capability that is important for one type of application, organizations might not be able to make the most of that capability if they switch between providers because it cannot be replicated on another platform. Competitors that use a cloud native approach can leverage that capability to provide more value for customers.

Another challenge that organizations must be aware of while considering a cloud-agnostic approach is cost. Building applications or services spread across different cloud providers can lead to unexpected bills, which are not only difficult to predict but also extremely difficult to understand. Instead of building the entire application using different vendors, it makes more sense to use a single provider to build the application but take advantage of add-on services from multiple vendors.

At the same time, building a cloud-agnostic strategy from the ground up – either for a particular workload or across the entire organization – can end up being extremely complex. It involves substantial work. It also requires organizations to be fully aware of what capabilities they want to leverage from which providers and then accordingly opt for those services – which can add to overall costs and implementation time.

How to choose between cloud native and cloud-agnostic?

Choosing between cloud native and cloud-agnostic isn’t always straightforward, but keeping a few things in mind can help ease the decision-making process.

If you want to minimize application downtime, a cloud-agnostic strategy can ensure your application automatically switches to another cloud – ensuring service is uninterrupted. Because you can switch cloud providers with minimal headache, you can improve performance by splitting workloads between providers.
If you want to take advantage of a cloud provider’s unique services and features, you should take a cloud native architectural approach. Since cloud native applications are designed and built to be used on a single cloud platform, they ensure better performance and availability. Opting for a cloud native strategy makes more sense if you want better cloud security and compliance.
. Because cloud native applications use a single provider’s APIs, they ensure better security and compliance features. Since cloud-agnostic applications rely on different APIs provided by various providers, they are responsible for ensuring the right level of cloud security and compliance on your team – rather than utilizing the application’s built-in features.
If you need better integration and portability, a cloud-agnostic approach can let you pick and choose which services and capabilities your application consumes from which vendor. Based on your requirement, you can cherry-pick the best suite of services and make the most of the innovations from different vendors.

As the number of organizations opting for cloud technology increases, the demand for cloud-agnostic development strategies is growing. Providing compatibility across various public and private clouds, these strategies allow them to leverage different cloud platforms and vendors to meet various requirements while taking full advantage of the capabilities inherent to these platforms.

But despite the benefits, because cloud-agnostic strategies also bring about potential drawbacks, engaging with a competent cloud expert that understands the nuances of cloud native and cloud-agnostic strategies becomes critical. Having a partner by your side can make sure you enjoy the level of flexibility that cloud-agnostic strategies provide. It can also deliver cost efficiencies and technical advantages via the selection of the best services and capabilities offered by different cloud providers.

This blog was published at:

https://thedailyguardian.com/a-primer-on-cloud-agnostic-strategies/

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