How to employ a multi-cloud strategy

Multi-cloud management uses multiple cloud services from different providers to achieve business goals instead of a single cloud provider. But why use various clouds? Consider a scenario where your organization's infrastructure is entirely on Amazon Web Services (AWS), but you need Azure Databricks for big data analytics and AI projects. Cloud migration to Microsoft Azure would be costly, and your team might need to be more familiar with Azure. Alternatively, skipping Azure Databricks isn't ideal either. The best solution is to continue using AWS for your existing infrastructure and integrate it with Azure Databricks, leveraging both platforms' strengths instead of using a single cloud. According to Michael Warrilow, VP Analyst at Gartner, 89% of the companies use multiple clouds to avoid vendor lock-in or take advantage of best-of-breed solutions.

In this article, we’ll look at:

1. What is a multi-cloud strategy?
2. When should we use it with practical examples?
3. Tools used to manage multiple clouds
4. The main challenges that occur in a multi-cloud environment
5. The solutions that Firefly, a multi-cloud asset management platform provides
6. The steps to seamlessly integrate a Kubernetes Cluster, AWS, GCP, and Azure account to Firefly.

Let's get started!

What is a Multi-Cloud strategy?

Multi-cloud strategy refers to using cloud services from multiple providers in a single architecture. This approach allows organizations to leverage each provider's unique strengths and features for optimized performance and flexibility. 

For example, AWS S3 is excellent for storing large volumes of data due to its simplicity and scalability. An organization might use AWS S3 for storage and Azure Databricks for advanced data analytics with Apache Spark. This way, they can leverage AWS's robust storage and Azure's powerful analytics, benefiting from the strengths of both platforms.

Where to Use Multi-Cloud?

The multi-cloud strategy offers significant advantages and flexibility in various scenarios. Here’s a detailed look at where and why to use a multi-cloud approach:

1. Geographically Dispersed Operations - A company with customers in North America, Europe, and Asia can use AWS for North American operations which has the lowest latency in that region, Azure works well in Europe, and GCP services are the best in Asia. This reduces latency and improves performance by ensuring data and services are hosted near their end-users, enhancing user experience and operational efficiency.
2. Compliance Requirements - A global financial services company can store European customer data in Azure to comply with GDPR, US data in AWS to meet CCPA requirements, and Asian data in Google Cloud Platform to adhere to local laws. This strategy ensures data sovereignty and compliance by using local data centers and services tailored to regional regulations.
3. Disaster Recovery - A company might run its primary services on AWS and use GCP for backup. If AWS experiences an outage, the company can switch operations to GCP, ensuring business continuity and minimizing downtime. This approach reduces the risk of a single point of failure and enhances overall business resilience.
4. Optimizing Costs and Performance - A company might use Azure Blob Storage for cost-efficient storage, AWS Lambda for serverless computing, and Google Cloud's BigQuery for robust data analytics. This approach ensures the company gets the best value and performance for each specific need, reducing overall costs and enhancing operational efficiency.

Tools to Manage Multiple Cloud

So far, we have discussed what multi-cloud is and why it's beneficial. However, implementing a multi-cloud strategy without a unified platform that integrates all your cloud providers can be daunting. Here's a list of some of the best tools that can make multi-cloud asset management a breeze:

1. Firefly - It continuously scans and governs your cloud with IaC-informed intelligence. Remediate risks, reduce costs, and prevent errors.
2. Flexera - It provides capabilities for discovery, template-based provisioning, orchestration, and automation; operational monitoring and management; governance; and cost optimization across multiple public and private clouds.
3. CloudBolt - It manages hybrid and multi-cloud environments with features for cost management, security, and compliance, supporting self-service provisioning.

Challenges of Multi-Cloud Management

Navigating a multi-cloud environment isn’t an easy job. Each cloud provider brings its own set of challenges, and you'll need to overcome significant hurdles to keep everything running smoothly. Let us look at the real-world challenges and what they mean for your day-to-day operations.

1) Complexity

Managing multiple cloud environments is like spinning several plates simultaneously. Each cloud provider has its own set of services, tools, interfaces, and quirks. Your team must be proficient in multiple platforms, which can be a real headache.

Consider you’re running databases on AWS, virtual machines on Azure, and containerized applications on GCP. Each platform has its own unique advantage, so your team needs to constantly switch contexts and tools, increasing the complexity of the cloud infrastructure. 

This where tools like Firefly comes into the picture where it continuously scans your infrastructure running on AWS, Azure, and GCP and provide you with all the relevant information, such as the cloud provider, resource type, resource name, IaC status, location, owner of the resource, creation date, and other properties which otherwise you will have to login or use different set of CLI to fetch the information.

Below is the screenshot which shows all the resources in your AWS, GCP and Azure on a single screen:

Firefly features are not just limited to listing all the resources; you can also apply complex filters, sorting, and searching based on asset types, location, cloud provider, IaC type, creation year, and owner to get the specific type of resources you need to check.

For example, in the screenshot below, we are searching for all the IAM Roles specific to AWS from all the resources in our multi-cloud environment:

2) Integration

Ensuring seamless integration between different cloud services like AWS, GCP, and Azure can be a nightmare. APIs, networking, and data formats can differ widely between providers, making it challenging to ensure seamless integration.        

Firefly facilitates the seamless integration of various cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP, separate assets like Kubernetes Clusters, as well as SaaS applications like Datadog, New Relic and Okta in one place.

Firefly can also notify and send you alerts about any issues related to security, drift detection, etc, by integrating a platform like Slack, Teams, Google Chat, etc. It can also integrate with project management tools like Jira; you can use webhooks or get on-call alerts on pagerduty:

Along with this, Firefly also fetches all the state files of your infrastructure in multi-cloud from various platforms. It also integrates with multiple version controls to create a pull request of the IaC Produced with Firefly.

To get more information about the state management of IaC with Firefly, refer to their state management guide. 

3) Security

Maintaining consistent security policies across multiple providers requires meticulous planning and implementation. Each cloud has its own security features and settings; keeping them aligned can be challenging.

Let’s say you have sensitive customer data stored in AWS and need to ensure it’s just as secure as your application data in Azure and your analytics data in GCP. You’ll need to configure IAM policies, encryption, and monitoring separately for each platform, increasing the chances of oversight.

Firefly supports multiple security frameworks for the Infrastructure, such as - Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard(PCI DSS), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act(HIPAA), and System and Organization Controls 2(SOC 2). 

Go to Governance> Frameworks to verify if your infrastructure meets the security standards. When you hover over a resource of your multi-cloud environment, FireFly also provides suggestion to improving its security.

To verify the PCI DSS compliance of your multi-cloud infrastructure on a single screen, go to PCI DSS section. In the below image, the infrastructure is only 46% PCI DSS compliant. This information can help your team to improve the security of the less compliant assets:

To verify SOC 2 compliance of your multi-cloud infrastructure on a single screen, go to SOC 2 section. In the below image, the infrastructure is only 43% SOC 2 compliant which is a red alert for the team:

To verify HIPAA compliance of your multi-cloud infrastructure on a single screen, go to HIPAA section. In below image, the infrastructure is 87% HIPAA compliant:

4) Cost Saving

Each provider has its own pricing model, and costs can spiral out of control without proper oversight. Saving costs across different platforms can be complex. 

You might be running cost-efficient storage on Azure, but your compute costs on AWS are higher than expected due to some unused assets that have not been removed. Identifying these unused assets can be time-consuming. This often requires manually combing through detailed billing reports from each provider, understanding their unique pricing models, and correlating them with your resources. The lack of standardization across providers can further complicate this process, making it difficult to get a comprehensive view of your overall cloud spending.

Firefly simplifies reducing costs across different platforms. In Governance > Frameworks > Cloud Waste, you can check all unused resources in the cloud provider, which can be removed to save monthly costs.

Firefly identifies the severity of assets left unused as high, medium, or low in all the cloud providers. In the below screenshot, the average compliance posture of the cloud waste is 82%:

Firefly also gives you insights about projected monthly savings by identifying the cloud waste on the Dashboard itself:

Multi-Cloud Architecture 

The image below is the architecture diagram of Firefly writing IaC in Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi, Ansible, K8s manifest, etc, for various resources in the multi-cloud environment, such as GCP, AWS, Azure, and K8s Cluster. After creating these assets, they can viewed on the Firefly platform itself:

Using Firefly for Multi-Cloud Asset Management

Choosing Firefly for managing your multi-cloud environment offers several significant advantages that go beyond traditional cloud management tools. Firefly is designed to streamline and optimize your cloud operations, providing a comprehensive solution tailored to the complexities of multi-cloud asset management. Here’s why Firefly stands out:

Visibility of Multi-Cloud Resources

Firefly provides a unified dashboard to monitor and manage assets across AWS, Azure, and GCP from a single interface. This centralized visibility simplifies operations and enhances efficiency.

The below screenshot is of our multi-cloud environment integrated to Firefly. The Dashboard shows it clearly that there are two Kubernetes Clusters, two GCP Projects, one AWS Account and one Azure Subscription integrated in the Firefly. It is also telling us that only 9.23% of our total assets are codified. This information can be used by the team to codify the remaining assets as well.

Insights Related to IaC Coverage in Firefly

Firefly’s IaC coverage allows you to manage your AWS, Azure, and GCP infrastructure from a single platform. This unified approach eliminates the hassle of juggling different tools and interfaces, streamlining your workflows, and ensuring consistency across your environments.

Firefly facilitates information regarding all the unmanaged resources of all the cloud vendors not covered in IaC on the Dashboard itself. In the bar chart below, Firefly is notifying that eight of the AWS EKS Addons are unmanaged. Similarly, eight Google Cloud Project IAM Members are unmanaged and so on:

When you click on click of any unmanaged resource, it takes us to the Inventory, applies the required filters, and gives us all the details of the asset.

As we click on the AWS EKS Addon, it redirected us to the Inventory and filtered out all the AWS EKS Addons from our multi-cloud infrastructure: 

Firefly also shows the IaC of all the assets from all the data sources in the multi-cloud combined. In the screenshot below, we get to know that out of all the 130 assets in our infrastructure, only 12 are codified which is 9.23% of the total assets. This can also be an alert for the team to codify the remaining 90.77% of the assets.

Not just unmanaged or codified, you also get information regarding other IaC types of your infrastructure.

On clicking any of the types, it takes you back to the Inventory and lists all the infrastructure of that type. As you can see in the below image, after clicking on the ‘child’ types, it takes us back to inventory where the assets of child IaC type are filtered out of all the multi-cloud resources.

Check out the Firefly inventory for more information.

In the IaC Explorer section, Firefly provides all the information regarding the IaC, such as the languages used, versions, providers, backends, modules, and their status. All these properties can be filtered to get the specific IaC you require.

In the below image, you can get a clear view of unique terraform versions, drifted stacks, modules which are never used, Misconfigurations, Providers used and pending integrations in the IaC of our multi-cloud infrastructure.

Check out the Firefly IaC explorer for more information.

In Settings > IaC-Ignored, you can add rules in which you define resources that should be avoided by Firefly while trying to fetch the IaC of the Infrastructure:

Using IaC in Firefly to Create Multi-Cloud Resources

Firefly integrates Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tools like Terraform, Pulumi, Ansible, Kubernetes manifest, etc. allowing you to automate the provisioning and management of infrastructure across multiple clouds.

You can write Terraform code in Firefly to deploy resources consistently across AWS, Azure, and GCP. This approach ensures infrastructure consistency and reduces manual errors.

But it is not just Terraform; Firefly can write the IaC for your multi-cloud infrastructure using multiple IaC tools. To generate IaC for your multi-cloud infrastructure, go to the compose section in Firefly.

Below is the image of Firefly generating K8s manifest files for an Nginx deployment containing three replicas:

Below is the image of Firelfy generating Pulumi Typescript to create a Blob Storage resource in Azure cloud:

Drift Detection in Firefly

Firefly includes drift detection capabilities to monitor changes made to your cloud resources outside of IaC-defined configurations like cloud console, CLI, scripts, etc.

Firefly can alert you when configuration drift occurs. This allows you to reconcile changes, maintain consistency, and mitigate potential security or compliance risks. To set drift detection alerts, go to the Notifications section and click ‘Add New’:

In the next panel, select the event type as ‘Drift Detection’, select your Data Source, Destination, and finally click ‘Create’:

You can refer to this guide for more information on Drift detection in Firefly.

Customer Support

Firefly provides responsive technical assistance to users. You can integrate your multi-cloud infrastructure easily and rapidly with the help of their support in the platform itself.

You can check out Firefly Academy to learn more about Firefly, IaC, and Multi-Cloud strategy.

Integration of Cloud Platforms in Firefly

Integration of AWS in Firefly - Go to https://app.firefly.ai/integrations/aws-integration, log in to Firefly, and follow the steps to integrate your AWS account with the platform.

Integration of Azure in Firefly - Go to https://app.firefly.ai/integrations/azure-integration, log in to Firefly, and follow the steps to integrate your Azure account with the platform.

Integration of K8s Cluster in Firefly - Go to https://app.firefly.ai/integrations/k8s-integration, log in to Firefly, and follow the steps to integrate your Kubernetes cluster with the platform. 

Integration of GCP in Firefly - Go to https://app.firefly.ai/integrations/gcp-provider-integration, log in to Firefly, and follow the steps to integrate your GCP Account with the platform.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is a Multi-Cloud?

The multi-cloud approach uses multiple cloud services from different providers to meet your business goals. Instead of relying solely on AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure, you strategically spread your workloads across several platforms. This approach lets you tap into each provider's unique strengths— leveraging AWS's vast ecosystem, GCP's advanced machine learning tools, or Azure's robust enterprise solutions.

Q. Is Multi-Cloud the same as Hybrid Cloud?

Multi-Cloud vs. Hybrid Cloud strategy:

Q. Which company uses multi-cloud?

Many leading companies adopt multi-cloud strategies to leverage the strengths of different cloud providers for their business operations. Some examples are - Netflix, Lyft, Airbnb, Pinterest, and HSBC.

Q. Is multi-cloud free?

Multi-cloud itself is not free. While cloud providers offer various free-tier services and pricing models, using multiple cloud platforms involves costs. While multi-cloud offers flexibility and resilience, it requires careful cost management and operational oversight to ensure it remains cost-effective and aligned with business objectives.