CA Southern Africa, Symantec: Multicloud is the future of enterprise IT

Michael Brink, CTO, CA Southern Africa.

---

CA Southern Africa highlights Broadcom’s prediction that multicloud is the future of enterprise business. A recent report reveals that more than 80% of enterprises surveyed have a multicloud strategy and nearly that number (78%) already have workloads deployed in more than three public clouds. Enterprises are realising the need to customise their cloud infrastructures to better fit their business needs.

Michael Brink, CTO at CA Southern Africa, notes the continuing acceleration of customisation in the year ahead is why multicloud is one of the top transformative technology trends in 2023.

“The reasons are not hard to discern. As organisations continue transitioning their networking and IT infrastructures to cloud, it is becoming hard to ignore the opportunities and benefits of a multicloud environment. This approach enables the flexibility to manage and protect data across different environments – private, public and sovereign – as needed. Maintaining this freedom, choice, control and agility is crucial for future growth and critical for maintaining compliance with regulatory and statutory requirements for enterprises operating at global scale,” says Brink.

As organisations continue transitioning their networking and IT infrastructures to cloud, it is becoming hard to ignore the opportunities and benefits of a multicloud environment.

Brink adds that another factor contributing to multicloud deployments is evolving regulatory compliance, which is accelerating the sovereign cloud – a cloud environment housed within the jurisdiction. “Multicloud deployments allow full flexibility to adjust to changes to regulatory changes.

“A final factor contributing to multicloud deployments is a business-driven initiative to accelerate the reduction of how many data centres a business is running. By consolidating and reducing the number of data centres, businesses set themselves up to quickly deliver on evolving customer and market demands through technology, especially technology bolstered by artificial intelligence (AI). Companies want to move quickly and effectively to the cloud, while managing costs and risks, without having to refactor their entire workload – especially back-end platforms and solutions that have been working well for decades,” says Brink.

There are several reasons why this trend to multicloud will accelerate in 2023. The reality is that being locked into a single cloud vendor, or a single type of cloud infrastructure, does not offer the flexibility needed to control costs, maintain control over information, or the agility necessary to operate successfully in a world already growing bigger in providers – and evolving types – of clouds.

A multicloud environment avoids these pitfalls while enhancing the capabilities to move across public cloud, data centres and edge infrastructures. Multicloud is also cost-effective and provides enterprises with the freedom to select the best products and services for their business needs. In short, it will become the inevitable as well as ideal cloud networking environment for managing and supporting the decentralised and distributed resources, assets, services and workforces that comprise the real-world reality of our post-pandemic digital age.

“Another key driver of this trend in 2023 will be the transition of talking about cloud from a technology discussion to a business outcomes conversation. Rather than enterprises reinventing the wheel each time to create their own cloud, there is a growing awareness that time to value can be greatly accelerated by sharing key components of multicloud infrastructures. Key to this business-driven discussion is the acceptance and evolution of the idea some call industry cloud platforms or vertical industry clouds. These are multicloud infrastructures with built-in, modular functionality tailored to a specific vertical industry,” adds Brink.

Adopting a business or industry multicloud model will also speed the transition to cloud for many organisations.

Brink says multicloud provides a platform containing the kind of built-in but customisable capabilities a top CRM provider or HR software provider offers their customers, but on a much grander scale that goes beyond any single vertical software as a service (SaaS) solution.

“Only multicloud infrastructures offer this kind of industry-specific or vertical cloud platform adaptability. Multicloud allows enterprises to make the leap from the cloud services with which we are all familiar to creating new cloud platforms with the agility to far more easily and quickly be adapted to new business opportunities, changing business circumstances or technology innovations,” says Brink. 

Adopting a business or industry multicloud model will also speed the transition to cloud for many businesses by allowing them to take advantage of the plug-and-play aspects of a multicloud’s prepackaged, modular components.

“Industry-model multicloud infrastructures will offer many enterprises the best solution for a decentralised networking environment. Multicloud is the future of enterprise IT. And when integrated with sovereign cloud, multicloud will allow organisations to deliver differentiated services at scale while remaining secure and in compliance with regulatory frameworks around the globe. Enterprises recognise that because of this, multicloud will help their organisations deliver stronger business value. It is the reason companies are accelerating their transition to multicloud infrastructures this year and why it is a top trend transforming IT in 2023,” concludes Brink.