According to Gartner, companies without a ‘cloud policy’ would be as rare in 2020 as there are companies without an ‘internet policy’ today. Additionally, more than 60% of the IT infrastructure and software in an organization is predicted to be cloud-based during the same period. However, the most important of all predictions is that more than 90% of companies will be using multi-cloud services. This is something to take note of.

What are so companies looking to transition to a multi-cloud strategy? Because an organization can maximize its return on investment (ROI) while minimizing risks associated with individual cloud environments by working across multiple-cloud environments. There are several benefits for organizations that adopt a multi-cloud strategy including:

  • High availability

  • Flexibility

  • Cost-effectiveness

  • Lower risk of DDoS attacks

So, it is established that a multi-cloud strategy can greatly benefit any organization but how do you ensure a successful transition to a multi-cloud environment? With a strategy for managing risk and finding a cloud service that is best suited to applications and workloads in terms of infrastructure, pricing, and level of service.

A multi-cloud approach can be instrumental in establishing or maintaining the competitive advantage of your company in the current digital economy. However, you need a proven strategy for mapping out opportunities, and access to a well-built management tool to realize these benefits.

Not only should your chosen strategy aid migrations, but it should also enable the insights required to ensure flawless management of migration, change, inventory, and security in a multi-cloud environment. Microservices fits the bill perfectly.

Understanding Microservices and How It Aids the Transition to a Multi-Cloud Strategy

Used by developers to build new applications, microservices are a set of individual applications that are consolidated into a larger system. In addition to aiding the development of apps, microservices can help split and refactor legacy monolithic app to aid the transition to the cloud. When an enterprise transitions to a multi-cloud strategy, it means that it is ready to optimize the use of available technologies. Microservices can help ensure this by:

  • Introducing a new approach to application architecture

  • Being spectacularly configurable

  • Integrating into any product that needs to be scalable from the start

  • Meeting the demands of the advanced and high-performance applications in the multi-cloud environment

When it comes to enabling a multi-cloud environment, containers are considered as one of the most important tools. Containers are critical because they make it possible for users to transition the contained app from one cloud to another without causing it to lose any of its functionality. This is achieved by the packaging and separation of apps with their complete runtime environment. This allows companies to pick providers of public cloud based on universal standards.

What is the role of microservices in all this? It facilitates the above-mentioned portability. In microservices, the software is written using an architectural approach. This approach involves disassembling applications into their smallest components. This allows the applications to be separate from each other.

The Three Main Reasons Microservices are Critical in a Multi-Cloud Environment

Why use microservices for a multi-cloud environment? Because it can enable benefits such as quicker release and update of software, and faster addition of new functionalities in the cloud. Additionally, it allows you to allocate personnel to parts of your systems based on their size and importance. Moreover, since teams are working separate from one another, they can deliver updates more quickly.

While there are many advantages of using microservices for multi-cloud, the following are the three main reasons that make microservices critical in a multi-cloud environment:

Application Proliferation

Today, developers must be able to easily and quickly develop and deploy applications. They must also be able to move applications from premises to the cloud and vice versa. This has become important due to the proliferation of apps and the interactions with customers that are run on them. Microservices architectures and deployment enabled by containers can help to ensure this. The two are among the main factors driving the adoption of both the multi-cloud environment and multi-cloud applications.

Microservices architectures look to build apps that are scalable and can be easily distributed. Moreover, they make sure that these apps can support agile deployment whether it happens on-premises or in a cloud environment. Today, a number of organizations are transitioning to the cloud to modernize their legacy applications. generally, this requires the use of several cloud services to quickly bring new functionality to applications.

At times, cloud or SaaS provides host and provide the microservices. This makes it possible for enterprises to combine on-premise data centers with outside services to integrate microservices into the organization.  To allow organizations to more quickly create multi-cloud applications, an increasing number of major cloud providers are starting to support access to microservices across multiple cloud environments.

Support for Open-Source

With a multi-cloud approach, organizations can avoid the pitfalls of relying on a single cloud vendor. Enterprises can use a cloud platform at a preferred time when they spread workloads across multiple cloud vendors. Having multiple clouds is better than bad and the good is magnified by an open source software. This is because open source technologies can bring a consistent foundation to any cloud deployment.

So, where does microservices come in all this? When applications are designed from the beginning to be modular and composable, an organization can use drop-in components in many places which may have required proprietary solutions in the past.

Alternative Interfaces to Applications

Application developers may find it easy to offer alternative interfaces to an organization’s applications when they focus on microservices. Since everything is an API, microservices standardize communications between applications components. The only thing a component needs to do to ensure validation and communication across the APIs is utilizing the data and application of an organization. The makes it possible for the internal and external workforce of an organization to easily develop new ways to utilize an application’s data and services.

A multi-cloud strategy is almost inevitable for all organizations in the future. A good way to prepare for this eventuality is by introducing microservices into the multi-cloud environment. As seen above, there are many advantages to this.