Based on the current industry business model there are two types of predominant words when we speak with CIO: Multi-Cloud and/or Hybrid Cloud approach.

What we really intend with Multi-Cloud approach?

• A multi-cloud approach is a strategy that involves the company using multiple CSPs to meet the IT and HW needs of the company.
• This approach is a valid approach for companies that would like to differentiate CSPs services using some specific services by different Cloud Providers; considering the variety of services available in the market, the approach, to move from internal IT/HW to external Cloud Providers can be very effective with an increased flexibility to meet the needs of the company and customization of some services;
• Another advantage is about Cost Optimization as the Multi-Cloud approach can help the organizations to differentiate the services by optimizing the costs based on the choice of the most cost-effective services provided by the Cloud Providers.
• furthermore, the choice of Multi-Cloud could help to reduce risk of outages by differentiating the services over multiple service providers.

Based on the above statements it looks clearly that Multi-Cloud approach represents the future evolution of the traditional Cloud Computing.

The challenges of Multi-Cloud

There are challenges that the company should evaluate deeply before moving in a multi-cloud approach such as:

• Ensure the Interoperability between the CSPS, this is a key element to have a clear views of who is doing what, to avoid bad surprises the company should have a control about the IT services running over different CSPs and this requires to have skilled person able to operate above the HW layer and understand how orchestrate at best the various IT services.
• Security and compliance is another delicate aspect of this approach as the company should state which data can operate in compliance with the regulation, as per example Health Data must be secured under GDPR and hosted in DC with specific certifications to secure their data.

It is evident that in a Multi-Cloud approach the (System Integrators) SI and Managed Services Providers (MSP) play a key role in supporting and guiding the organizations to choose and manage multiple cloud environments.

Nowadays the shortage of the skills are forcing companies to delay the cloud adoption, however choosing the right SI/MSP it’s a must move for: designing, deploying and in certain case operating the platform on behalf of the customers.

The Ecosystem of Partners

The Ecosystem of OVHcloud have a huge variety of SI and MSPs that can help and support the organizations to move faster in direction of the new Cloud approach with the right skills to avoid delay in Cloud adoption and move the IT faster in a new era of fast Business needs.

We again hugely invite the companies that are looking for the right cloud approach to go in the Partner Directory of OVHcloud and find the right partner for their exigences.

Developing a multi-cloud strategy will provide your startup with the most appropriate tools at a price that suits your budget, giving you the best possible chance of success.  

Here are three reasons why you should consider a multi-cloud strategy: 

1. Multiple clouds mean you dictate which technologies to deploy, not your vendor  

 All cloud vendors are at differing stages in their technology offerings and roadmaps, and they have their own priorities for introducing new services and upgrades. This means that if a business needs an important cloud feature or service which isn’t a priority for their vendor, they could be left hanging around waiting for the vendor to catch up. In the modern fast-moving digital business environment, this delay can impact the growth and profitability of a business and allow competitors to step in and take advantage.  

For example, if a startup was launching a product where their most important criteria for choosing a cloud to host their application was disk drive performance, they would likely be surprised to find that the biggest cloud brands may not be their best option.  

Earlier this year, Cloud Spectator performed an analysis of latency and disk speed performance from the top vendors, and was surprised to find that OVHcloud outperformed the likes of AWS, Azure and Oracle for non-volatile memory express (NVMe), a new protocol for accessing SSDs.  

“OVHcloud simply outperformed everything else and delivered the fastest NVMe storage we’ve observed in the cloud market,” the analysis revealed. “OVHcloud VMs cost substantially less while putting out superior raw performance numbers to rival matches. In short, OVHcloud hardware gave both the best economy and performance.”  

2. Multiple clouds diversify your security footprint 

From a security standpoint, multi- and hybrid-cloud environments can aid disaster recovery procedures and reduce the likelihood of complete system shutdown from a cyberattack. However, multi-cloud also demands a whole new security approach to ensure all parts of the chain, across different cloud providers, is secure.  

One multi-cloud security challenge is around authentication and access control. In this CIO.com article, Jim Reavis, CEO of the Cloud Security Alliance, says organisations need to ensure the cloud services they choose are compatible with open standards for identity. “Common challenges across all multi-clouds are providing seamless access to cloud services to users based upon their default credentials, maintaining least privilege access across all clouds, and keeping up with risk assessments and vetting of additional cloud services,” he says. 

According to ZDNet, many large organisations are still reluctant to trust the cloud with their most sensitive data. Choosing a hybrid-cloud strategy allows them to protect that information in their on-premises datacentre. And this trend towards hybrid cloud has been accelerated by the pandemic.  

The article cites a 2021 study by analyst Forrester and IBM in support of this, which discovered that despite the hype, companies still want to maintain some control. “The push to public cloud has not stopped investments in on-premises infrastructure… Organisations require flexible, open IT, while maintaining secure delivery and high performance. A hybrid-cloud strategy can offer firms better control of their sensitive data and where it resides during uncertain times.”  

However, for startups and smaller companies, running an on-premises datacentre is likely to be prohibitively expensive. The solution is to find a cloud vendor that offers the best of both worlds.  

This type of flexible approach means that these companies are able to shift to the cloud in a way that suits them best, running an application, workload or data on any cloud—public, private and hybrid—based on their individual technical requirements.  

 3. Multi-cloud saves you money  

 Multiple clouds can enable organisations to pick the most cost-efficient technology for their workloads.  

When starting your cloud journey there are many decisions to be made. What is the best location for your data? Which equipment is needed? Which other services and contracts will give your business the best chance of success?  

A multi-cloud strategy allows startups to control their costs and stay on budget. It means you can choose the vendors offering the best value for the specific services you need.   

In addition, if your cloud vendor’s technology is based on open standards, they will avoid proprietary technologies that lock you in as a customer. This makes it possible to move to another cloud provider should they offer more attractive services.  

According to Forbes magazine, for cloud success multi-cloud isn’t an optional extra, it’s a requirement. The article states: “The cloud is here to stay, and it won’t be long before every company is using multiple clouds in their environment. Taking a step back now and developing a multi-cloud strategy will ensure that your organisation delivers the promised business benefits of the cloud as quickly as possible.” 

Summary  

A multi-cloud strategy gives startups the flexibility to cherry pick and take advantage of the best services from different cloud providers. They can take advantage of innovative new features from the marketplace and avoid being locked-in to and reliant upon the roadmap of a single cloud vendor.  

Multi-cloud across different providers can also offer greater resilience and redundancy, but startups need to be aware of the potential security and interoperability challenges too. A multi-cloud approach also gives startups greater control over cloud costs, with the ability to place workloads with vendors that offer the best value.  

With OVHcloud, our customers have had success using multi-cloud solutions with on-premises systems, combining the security, compliance and visibility benefits of on-premises with the scalability of public cloud.   

Client d’OVH bien avant d’en être un collaborateur, Yann connaît bien les forces et les faiblesses de l’entreprise, comme il connaît tout autant les solutions et les outils proposés par les grands fournisseurs américains.

Pour lui, le concept de cloud européen est fondamental et ce n’est pas un hasard s’il a rejoint OVH. Dans cette optique, l’un des objectifs qui lui tient à cœur est justement de mieux faire connaître et utiliser le cloud du leader européen, à l’égal de ceux proposés par les fournisseurs américains. C’est pourquoi il s’attelle à améliorer l’accompagnement dans l’utilisation des solutions d’OVH, des services sur lesquels il a lui-même passé quelques nuits blanches.

Son expertise l’amène à dire qu’aujourd’hui, « l’infra as code n’est plus optionnelle. C’est LA manière de travailler, le chemin nominal pour bâtir une infrastructure cloud, d’autant plus dans un contexte microservices et multitechnologique ». Et en tant que devops, dans ce contexte d’automatisation, il considère que sa mission est de « chercher sans relâche les meilleurs outils. »

Plusieurs fournisseurs de cloud, au-delà des solutions qui leur sont propre, convergent vers des solutions opensource et multi providers. Dès lors, quand un utilisateur projette de bâtir une architecture en « infrastructure as code », il a davantage de chance d’utiliser les clouds déjà intégrés sur ces outils.

Et OVH dans tout ça ? « Il fallait montrer qu’OVH était là aussi et manifester notre présence auprès de la communauté des Devops. » explique Yann. 

Le choix de Terraform 

Plusieurs outils d’orchestration cloud permettent de faire de « l’Infrastructure as code ». Pour Yann, c’est le logiciel Terraform* qui répond le mieux au besoin, « car il a été, dès le départ, conçu pour gérer tout le cycle de vie de l’infrastructure. Et aussi parce qu’il est open source et bénéficie d’une communauté très active. » Enfin, c’est aussi parce qu’il supporte plusieurs fournisseurs que Yann en a fait une priorité. « Dans une perspective d’infrastructure multitechnologique et/ou multicloud, Terraform permet de décrire de l’infrastructure à provisionner chez différents fournisseurs ». Pour Yann, « choisir son orchestrateur, c’est un peu comme un artisan avec sa propre boîte à outils ! Chacun sélectionne ceux avec lesquels il est le plus à l’aise. L’important reste ce qu’on fait avec. Les recettes Terraform que nous écrivons vont nous permettre de démontrer toute la valeur de notre plateforme et tout ce que l’on peut faire avec OVH. »

Les premiers templates disponibles 

Partager, c’est l’une des autres valeurs fondamentales de Yann, qui a déjà commencé à mettre à la disposition de la communauté devops, les premiers packages de bonnes pratiques qu’il a mis au point, dans des modules Terraform. Ainsi, ses premiers templates disponibles sont :

• Créer un réseau privé multirégion
  « Tous les devops en ont besoin, et ça reste assez complexe quand il faut tout créer de A à Z. Là, l’utilisateur prend le template, donne ses variables d’entrée et en quelques minutes, il obtient un réseau privé multirégion prêt à accueillir une infra hautement disponible ! » . L’utilisateur va ainsi accéder au réseau de fibre en propre d’OVH et bénéficier gratuitement du trafic entre régions. https://registry.terraform.io/modules/ovh/publiccloud-network/ovh/0.1.2
• Comment démarrer avec Kubernetes
  Pour Yann, ce template était indispensable : « Kubernetes, qu’on l’aime ou non, est l’outil vers lequel tous les usages sont en train de converger. Il est en passe de devenir une plateforme unifiée permettant de parler à tous les clouds du monde. Fournir un template d’installation permet aux utilisateurs d’appréhender l’outil ainsi que son intégration sur notre cloud. » https://registry.terraform.io/modules/ovh/publiccloud-k8s/ovh/
  Quelques exemples ici : https://registry.terraform.io/modules/ovh/publiccloud-k8s/ovh/0.1.0/examples/public-cluster-cl
• Comment déployer un cluster OpenStack sur OpenStack
  Ce dernier cas d’usage, utile notamment pour monter des environnements de développement, est aussi particulièrement adapté pour tester et déployer les dernières versions mises à jour de la plateforme OpenStack dès que celles-ci sont disponibles. Le template sera très prochainement partagé.

Et, pour démarrer l’utilisation de Terraform avec OVH, Yann a écrit un tutoriel préalable, en ligne ici :  https://github.com/ovh/terraform-ovh-commons

Restez connectés, d’autres templates sont en préparation.

* Mis au point par HashiCorp, pour la création et la gestion des infrastructures IT dans le cloud, Terraform est écrit en langage Go et fonctionne en mode « Infrastructure as code ». Il permet aux opérateurs d’administrer l’infrastructure grâce au code au lieu de procéder à un traitement manuel de celui-ci. https://www.terraform.io/