Vendor lock-in can make cloud independence a pipe dream

The world's largest cloud providers are currently making billions, gradually locking clients into using their other services and devices. The success of the cloud leaders though may limit the freedom of customers to use whichever cloud services they like and those which best suit their business.

Within the next two years, over 90% of businesses will use cloud services offered by multiple providers, using a variety of orchestration tools. Capabilities which rely on Public cloud and multi-cloud platforms are now rightly included in business' long-term investments.

Many businesses are just worthless without the cloud platforms they rely on. This means enterprises will increasingly want to mitigate the risks and volatility of dependence on any single provider. Executive boards therefore need to avoid dependence on a single technology or "cloud-dependent" orchestrators.

The fundamental glue of many cloud platforms are the Internet Protocol Address Management (IPAM), Domain Name Server (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) technologies which assign 'addresses' and manage application access into and out of the multi-tenanted clouds which are so popular today. Easy transitions between clouds - the promise of cloud independence - is closely linked to choosing the right DDI (DNS-DHCP-IPAM) solution thus it becomes key.

Today's nirvana, tomorrow's millstone
Lock-in can be extremely detrimental to organizations for many reasons, from pricing power to strategic business agility.  IT and Line of Business leaders may feel the need to break free from a certain cloud provider for many reasons including scale, security or governance.

However too often, organisations forget to prepare for this at the start of their cloud journey and become trapped by proprietary technology. According to IDC research, only a few enterprises were confident their  multi-cloud strategy is sufficiently  company-wide, well-orchestrated, automated and secure.

The reality at operational level could be even worse than this. Incorporating IPAM solutions which do not integrate well with the deployed IT automation ecosystem is a huge gamble. Selecting an unsuitable IPAM, or indeed DDI, means complex migration and makes extending deployment of services onto other clouds a major headache.

Very few managers make decisions which have poor long term outlooks. A common reason for a lack of longer term thinking is where there is a deficiency of communication between siloed teams. Typically this leaves an organisation with multiple IPAM solutions, which in turn brings conflicts due to basic IP synchronisation.

The key to freedom - cloud-agnostic orchestration

True cloud independence is being able to move from one provider, whether public or private, to another, in as frictionless a manner as possible. Using orchestrators which work with multiple clouds, brings businesses benefit by ensuring processes and workflow for provisioning resources (IDs and IPs) take place at the highest level. This in turns brings complete traceability of which resources were correctly provisioned and, consequencently, easier cybersecurity oversight.

To maximise independence, the IPAM chosen should be capable of integrating with almost any orchestrator through its API or adapters. As an abstraction layer for DNS synchronisation and IP address provisioning, DDI is a key component. Using an integrated DDI solution, which unites IPAM, DNS and DHCP in one solution, helps manage any infrastructure. In a stroke this eliminates much of the risk of conflicts which can occur when multiple IPAMs are in place.

A centralised and cloud-agnostic IP address management process, able to accommodate any cloud provider, brings consistency of IP address plan across the various providers companies typically have. It is especially useful in organisations built up from many business mergers. IT teams value having a single repository, as well as global management of the IP address system to make multi-cloud effective, secure and well-managed.

Plotting your cloud escape

Companies often rush to cloud providers, but cautious enterprises also plan for a cloud exit at some point. The smarter ones do this right at the onset to de-risk their IT plans. A centrally-managed DDI gives enterprises the freedom to move to different DNS servers of different cloud providers through APIs without the heavy lifting of reformatting all the workflows.

Challenges brought by manual resource provisioning can be overcome, with the right tools, by adding one-click functionality for deploying services and "one-click reversibility", where customers test a workload in one platform and move it to another or even, increasingly, bring it back on-premise. Enterprises conscious of cloud dependence or lack of multi-cloud interoperability will consequently be less hesitant to launch their cloud strategy.

Get off of your cloud with DevOps and IPAM

Modern network infrastructures sprawl over on-premise and across many clouds, limiting visibility into the virtual networks or IP addresses. Cloud migration is heavily dependent on IPAM, as visibility is needed at the start, and capacity to manage the migration in correlation with DNS services.

DDI forms the secure network foundation for cloud. Integrating DDI into the orchestration process brings consistent, error-free configurations and improve speed of provisioning of IP resources. In multi-cloud environments, this enables the fastest rollout of new applications or services as part of DevOps initiatives and improves user experiences.

Integration and centralised management is best practice to  help enterprises break from the silo approach. In many instances, coordination and standardisation across the layers can quickly improve end-to-end quality.

Managing multi-cloud infrastructures and managing heterogeneous environments are inherently very complex tasks. A DDI solution that can help overcome network complexities can truly add value. It can provide fast, consistent deployment of IP and DNS resources across all infrastructures and ultimately improve a business' time to market and customer experience. After all, customer experiences and speed to market make or break brands these days.

Bringing core network services together with the public cloud in a single interface overcomes many of the challenges of multi-cloud security as it provides end-to-end visibility, a single interface to manage DDI across the full stack, and sets up the enforcement of policies for DNS-DHCP services.

Automating these tasks using vendor and platform-agnostic solutions saves companies time, reduces cost and reduces risk. Most importantly, it's a major step towards ensuring your business remains truly cloud independent. Instead of just building other people's trillion dollar businesses, you can think about building yours.