When most people talk about multi-cloud as an architectural approach, they usually refer to the usage of more than one cloud provider to run their applications and services. And while using more than one provider is great in some situations by itself, it still lacks the integration between those providers which applications need in order to form a coherent and highly flexible solution. A multi-cloud solution without integration means that software cannot easily communicate, share state, and is not governed by the same policy rules. In this post I will explore the different aspects of cloud integration, what benefits it provides beyond basic multi-cloud and why I think it is the next natural evolution of multi-cloud.
Connectivity
Having integrated connectivity between infrastructure providers is important because it enables the seamless communication between services or components of the same application which are not collocated. Lack of direct connectivity means that traffic crossing provider boundaries must be treated as any external source. Enabling this without multi-cloud integration means extra configuration overhead for each individual service at the least or even major configuration or software modification.
Some of the implementation approaches to provide connectivity are - Virtual Private Networks, Overlay Networks, Cloud Peering, and MPLS.
Service discovery
Having service discovery enabled for multi-cloud is essential for applications and resources where connectivity is already established. This simple means that systems are capable to discover the address of and connect to other systems to another provider. A typical example of service discovery is DNS.
Multi-Cloud service discovery can be implemented by using public or private DNS or third-party services like Zookeeper.
User and policy management
Having a centralized, multi-cloud capable user and policy enforcement system will save a lot of time where configuration intensive rules must be replicated and continuously updated between providers.
Security
There are many aspect to security and the same apply to multi-cloud as for different public and private networks as well. For example having a single certificate authority along with TLS encryption and authentication for the whole multi-cloud layer is one of the ways to implement an overarching security layer.
Future outlook
As companies continue the process of software migration from on-premise to hybrid and multi-cloud, it is inevitable that the need for tighter integration between clouds becomes even more relevant. We already see a host of companies and tools approaching multi-cloud at different angles like CI/CD, data storage, connectivity, etc and I expect to see increased innovation in the coming years.
Tools and services
We have just scratched the surface of multi-cloud integration and each of the topics above can be explored in much higher detail. When it comes to implementation, be sure you have the right team and skill-set with in depth knowledge of cloud providers and network technologies to implement such integration layer.
Daiteap is one of the best multi-cloud integration solutions out there which features a complete set of features to enable rapid multi-cloud environment creation within hours. Check it out at and do not hesitate to contact me directly for questions and projects.
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