Multicloud: the key to avoiding crashes and ensuring operational continuity

Business continuity is one of the biggest concerns for companies in the digital age. A single crash in a system can cause significant interruptions, economic losses and damage a company's reputation. In this context, the multicloud approach has emerged as a strategic solution to ensure the continuous availability of services and minimize the risks associated with technological failures.

In this blog, common problems related to system failure and how multicloud acts as an effective solution will be presented, as well as some success stories where this strategy has proven to be key to business resilience.

What is Multicloud?

Multicloud is a strategy that indicates that we must use services from multiple cloud providers (such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, among others) simultaneously, in order to be able to diversify cloud services and help ensure that applications or pages do not fall completely when one of the services is disabled or to be able to migrate services between clouds when necessary.

Common problems related to crashing systems

System interruptions can occur for a variety of reasons, and their consequences are often critical for companies. Not only can the entire system crash, but they can also create economic losses and inconvenience to users. Here are some of the most common problems:

1. Depend on a single vendor

Many companies rely on a single cloud service provider to manage their operations. This may seem convenient, but it involves a significant risk: if that vendor has an outage, the entire business infrastructure is affected and the system can be left down for long hours.

2. Unexpected server failures

Technical problems with servers, whether due to maintenance, human error, or natural disasters, can cause abrupt crashes. These failures not only affect productivity, but they also negatively impact the customer experience and can lead to great economic losses.

3. Cyber Attacks

Denial of service (DDoS) attacks and other cyber threats can make systems inaccessible. The lack of an appropriate backup strategy increases that vulnerability.

4. Long recovery time

When a downturn occurs, companies often face long recovery times. This generates significant economic losses, especially when the service being provided requires 24/7 availability, this becomes crucial.

How Multicloud protects against falls

The multicloud approach, which involves using multiple cloud service providers instead of relying on a single one, offers a robust solution to the problems mentioned. These are the main advantages it provides:

1. Redundancy and increased availability

Multicloud allows you to distribute workloads between different clouds. This means that if a provider experiences problems, services can continue to operate from another cloud, ensuring continuous availability. This way, for example, you can ensure that a crash in AWS doesn't affect your services backed up in Azure or Google Cloud.

2. Risk distribution

By diversifying providers, companies reduce the risk associated with relying on a single platform. This is especially useful for minimizing the impact of interruptions or technical problems, so, for example, if 30% of your infrastructure is in each of three providers, a total drop of only one affects only that percentage.

3. Adaptability and flexibility

Multicloud offers the freedom to choose the best provider for each specific need, whether it's storage, data analysis or applications. In addition, it allows you to scale quickly based on business demands or to be able to change suppliers when another one offers better opportunities.

4. Disaster protection

With a multicloud strategy, backups and critical data can be stored in different geographical locations. This ensures that, even in the event of natural disasters or regional failures, systems can recover quickly.

5. Cost optimization

The use of multiple providers allows companies to take advantage of the most competitive offers and prices from each one, thus optimizing the budget without compromising the quality of the service.

Important Considerations

Operational complexity

Managing multiple vendors requires sophisticated orchestration tools, trained personnel, and well-defined processes. Platforms such as Kubernetes, Terraform, and cross-platform observability solutions are essential.

Initial costs

Implementing multicloud requires initial investment in architecture, migration, and tools. However, you can optimize long-term costs by selecting the best vendor for each workload.

Data Consistency

Maintaining data synchronization between multiple clouds is one of the biggest technical challenges. Replication strategies, conflict management, and latency must be carefully considered.

Security and Compliance

Each vendor has different security models and certifications. It's critical to maintain consistent security policies and comply with regulations across all platforms.

Key tools for multicloud

• Kubernetes: Vendor-agnostic container orchestration
• Terraform: Infrastructure as a cross-platform code
• Istio/Service Mesh: Traffic management between distributed services
• Datadog/New Relic: Unified monitoring and observability
• HashiCorp Consul: Service discovery and configuration management
• Cloudflare/Akamai: Global load balancing and intelligent DNS

Success stories: Companies that have succeeded with multicloud

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Case 1: Netflix and its multicloud approach

Netflix is a prominent example of how multicloud can ensure availability. While most of its infrastructure is on AWS, it also uses other providers to avoid interruptions. This strategy ensures that users can enjoy their content without interruption, even during peaks in demand or supplier failures.

Case 2: Airbnb and resilience through multicloud

Airbnb, the leading vacation rental platform, uses a multicloud strategy to ensure the global availability of its service. By distributing its operations across different clouds, the company can handle large volumes of traffic and recover quickly from unexpected failures.

Case 3: Fintech unicorn in Latin America

A renowned fintech company in Latin America implemented a multicloud strategy to manage its online banking operations. Thanks to this decision, it managed to maintain an uptime of 99.99%, even during cyberattacks and technical problems at one of its suppliers.

Conclusion

Falling systems not only represents a threat to business operations, but also to customer reputation and trust. In a highly interconnected world, where companies cannot afford downtime, multicloud presents itself as a strategic solution to ensure operational continuity. Although it involves additional complexity and requires investment, the benefits in terms of resilience, availability and business continuity far outweigh the challenges.

Success stories show that multicloud is not just a trend, but a necessity for companies that seek to remain competitive and protected in a constantly evolving digital environment.

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