2019 AN EVEREST GROUP VIEWPOINT

Business Transformation Through Multi-cloud

Interoperability is the Key to Success Yugal Joshi, Vice President

Mukesh Ranjan, Senior Analyst
Zachariah Chirayil, Senior Analyst

Copyright © 2019, Everest Global, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Introduction

As cloud computing has become mainstream – with more than 90% of enterprises having
adopted it in some form1 – focus is shifting from simple efficiency gains to digital
transformation. With this shift comes a change in cloud strategy: to achieve expected
business outcomes, enterprises need to adopt specific cloud platforms based on specific
need. In other words, one cloud does not fit all – a multi-cloud approach has become
central to overall cloud strategy.
The multi-cloud approach, while resolving some issues, presents a new set of challenges. In
many cases, the result of taking a multi-cloud approach is “cloud silos,” in which each cloud
operates independently, and, therefore, fail to deliver the expected business value. What
the multi-cloud initiatives need to succeed is an interoperability strategy.
When interoperability is at the core of the multi-cloud strategy, workloads run in unison to
drive business agility, reduce the cost of technology, and harmonize processes. Further, the
approach to multi-cloud interoperability needs to be inclusive and consider factors such as
multi-paced maturity, legacy investments, the cloud vision and investment roadmap,
industry, regulations and compliances, and security.
The key building blocks of an interoperable multi-cloud include designing workloads for
interoperability, leveraging a service discovery and management platform, enhancing the
integration landscape, and being aware of multiple open standards initiatives in the industry.
While technology is an important enabler of multi-cloud interoperability, enterprises also
need to consider other factors such as talent and collaboration in order for implementation
to succeed. Another important consideration is thinking ahead – as the multi-cloud program
matures, its characteristics will change and evolve.
In this report, we explore enterprise-based multi-cloud interoperability:
⚫ What is the current state of multi-cloud, what is driving adoption, and why are
enterprises not realizing the anticipated benefits?
⚫ Why should enterprises care about multi-cloud interoperability?
⚫ What are the building blocks of multi-cloud interoperability? How should enterprises
enable interoperability in a new versus an existing environment?
⚫ What are the key success factors for adopting multi-cloud interoperability? How should
enterprises plan for the future?

1 Everest Group research with 200 CXOs from large enterprises (more than US$1 billion in revenues)

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Increasing multi-cloud adoption

Our research suggests that multi-cloud adoption is on the rise for a variety of reasons.

EXHIBIT 1
State of multi-cloud adoption
Source: Everest Group (2019)

90% 46%
of enterprises already leverage of enterprise workloads are
or plan to leverage more than expected to be on a multi-cloud
one cloud1 architecture1

Key reasons multi-cloud is gaining traction

Enhances workload performance – Enterprises have found that not all workloads
perform equally on all clouds. For example, many want to keep sensitive workload on
their internal cloud yet leverage public or hosted cloud for other benefits. A multi-cloud
strategy is essential to access best-of-breed capabilities and align business objectives.
Avoids vendor lock-in – A multi-cloud strategy enables vendor diversification and
prevents lock-in. This benefit is important for enterprises to ensure that they can adopt
the most relevant platforms for their business objectives and move among cloud stacks
as needed.
Reduces service disruption – A multi-cloud model orchestrates workloads across clouds
and, therefore, reduces the risk of service disruption if one cloud goes down. A well-
designed multi-cloud approach also increases security, as each cloud provider delivers
added security to handle the load of disrupted servers.
Better negotiating power – Cloud providers offer discounts on list prices to attract
customers. An enterprise’s ability to move its workloads among different clouds ensures
its ability to negotiate favorable commercial constructs from the most desired internal or
external cloud provider.
Mergers and acquisitions – Though not a business driver, mergers and acquisitions do force
enterprises into multi-cloud adoption. Following a merger or acquisition, many enterprises
prefer not to force cloud provider rationalization, instead exploiting the benefits of keeping
multiple clouds.

1 Everest Group research with 200 CXOs from large enterprises (more than US$ 1billion in revenue)

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Interoperability – the missing link to enterprise success in multi-cloud

While multi-cloud offers a plethora of benefits, most enterprises are unable to realize its
true value. In fact, in engaging multi-cloud, many enterprises create a much more complex
environment with higher costs and no significant improvement in business outcomes. The
prime reason for this circumstance is the unplanned adoption of different clouds without
an interoperability construct. Not accounting for interoperability when adopting multi-
cloud results in multiple challenges for enterprises.

Challenges in a non-interoperable multi-cloud

Poor business agility – Cloud providers are increasingly promoting native platform
offerings that cannot be migrated easily outside their platform stack. An enterprise that
does not consider interoperability during cloud adoption ends up with workloads
operating in their siloes, unable to deliver the intended business agility.
Increased complexity and cost of technology – The more cloud platforms an
enterprise has, the more control planes, people, and tools it needs to manage. An
environment not designed to make clouds interoperate becomes ever more complex
and costly with each technology adoption.
Failure to achieve positive business impact due to limited cloud scaling – Without
interoperable clouds, enterprises create process silos across design, deployment, and
management, with limited cross leverage of standard procedures to derive business value.
These silos hinder the organization’s ability to scale cloud adoption and realize business
benefits.
Enterprises are giving their lines of business more autonomy to drive cloud agendas.
They believe such freedom will drive more business agility and, in turn, help them cater
to dynamic business demands. However, these objectives are impaired when
enterprises fail to take interoperability into account when adopting cloud services. A
cloud adoption rooted in interoperability will allow each business unit to move at its
own pace, using the best-suited cloud service. As long as there is an interoperability
strategy, the business need not be concerned about negative impacts of multi-cloud
selection.

Measures by hyperscalers to enable interoperability

Hyperscale providers are taking tentative steps toward addressing the concerns around
multi-cloud interoperability. Providers such as AWS and Azure, through their AWS
Outpost and Azure Stack offerings, respectively, have attempted to extend their public
cloud offerings to enterprise data centers. These solutions aim to create the same
public cloud experience in an on-premise data center and allow for interoperability
across a single provider’s cloud environment but not necessarily interoperability among
multiple providers. Google has taken a slightly different approach with Anthos, an
enterprise hybrid and multi-cloud platform. Anthos claims to allow enterprises to run
applications on-premises, in the Google Cloud, and other third-party cloud providers
such as AWS and Azure. However, Anthos requires enterprises to modify their
applications. Enterprises should be aware of hyperscale providers’ offerings, but also
know that true multi-cloud interoperability might not be something these hyperscale
providers desire.

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Classic multi-cloud versus an interoperable multi-cloud

While multi-cloud adoption is not new, most enterprises’ multi-cloud adoption

approaches lay a weak foundation for transformation. A classic multi-cloud is
characterized by the presence of more than one cloud in the environment without much
thought to orchestrating other vital elements. Different teams leverage different clouds,
focusing on specific benefits. This localized approach inhibits the organization’s ability to
realize broader benefits and exposes the business to security risks.
On the other hand, an interoperable cloud orchestrates data and services to enable various
clouds to operate more effectively together. This approach allows for both local and
organization-wide benefits and security, addressing such issues as poor workload
performance, cloud tech lock-in, environment complexity, resource sprawl, and cost
overrun.

EXHIBIT 2
Classic multi-cloud versus
interoperable multi-cloud
Source: Everest Group (2019)

Classic multi-cloud Interoperable multi-cloud

Disjointed and siloed multi-cloud Unified adoption across all clouds

adoption results in limited, enables realization of business benefits
localized benefits at an enterprise level
Business outcomes

Applications in one cloud do not work

Applications run seamless across all
seamlessly on other clouds leading to
clouds, enhancing workload performance
workload performance issues
Workload performance

Talent remains siloed and focused Cross-skilled talent in multi-cloud helps the
on the cloud environment in which enterprise drive skill longevity and prepares
they operate the business for talent scarcity challenges
Talent

Pockets of multiple clouds A unified view along with the security

spread across the estate result controls of different clouds working in
in security vulnerabilities unison improve overall security
Security

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Multi-cloud interoperability building blocks

Enterprises can think of enabling multi-cloud interoperability in two broad buckets –

greenfield cloud build and brownfield cloud transformation. Depending on where an
enterprise is in its overall cloud transformation journey, it can leverage a mix of both
approaches to move to an interoperable cloud environment.

EXHIBIT 3
Building blocks of multi-cloud
interoperability Transformation approaches
Source: Everest Group (2019)

Greenfield cloud Brownfield cloud

` transformation transformation

Transformation levers

Design for Management Integration Containerization Open cloud

interoperability and discovery platform standards
platform awareness

Design for interoperability

Enterprises should plan to introduce elements of multi-cloud interoperability as early as
possible in their development cycle. Doing so will help them to align strategy and vision
with on-the-ground efforts, as well as eliminate waste and avoid lock-in.
In order to enable interoperability with multiple cloud services, workloads should be
designed with service-centric principles and should be able to utilize and expose APIs.
Developers need to write cloud-agnostic code, minimize the use of platform-specific tools,
and avoid hardcoding private information.
Enterprises should plan for multi-cloud interoperability even if the current deployment is
for on-premise, private cloud, or a single cloud. Planning ahead reduces the technical debt
and effort required to re-architect the application later. Planning from the start and
designing with an intent will make multi-cloud architecture more practical.

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EXHIBIT 4
Design principles for multi-
cloud interoperability
Source: Everest Group (2019)

Follow Use a CI/CD

microservices- Use cloud agnostic pipeline, agnostic
based design coding and to the cloud
principles for minimize use of Automate as much provider, to
application design Use and expose increase reliability
platform-specific as possible to
and consumption APIs as default and repeatability
tools reduce complexity

Management and discovery platform

For a successful interoperable multi-cloud operating model, enterprises need to address the
challenges of service discovery, orchestration, and management of diverse cloud
environments. Cloud management and discovery platforms provide enterprises with tools
to manage applications’ deployments and operations, their datasets, and underlying
infrastructure across the diverse multi-cloud environments.
Enterprises should consider a management and service discovery platform that can provide
visibility across the environment. The platform should provide a simplified view through the
aggregation and integration of data from multiple cloud environments. It should assist in
multi-cloud interoperability through access and authorization management, resource
discovery and management across environments, financial management, service
integration, automation through service catalogs to support self-service provisioning, and
cloud brokerage. For mature enterprises, the management platform could use data,
policies, and governance already defined within systems or processes. For less mature
enterprises, configuration of the discovery and management platform can guide them
through the establishment of these policies and processes.

Integration platform
Enterprises increasingly face the challenge of enabling applications and data sources
deployed in multiple cloud environments to work together. They have traditionally
depended on point-to-point solutions to integrate specific applications or platform
endpoints. Multi-cloud interoperability requires enterprises to address complex integration
requirements that exist within and among multiple clouds. Multiple point-to-point solutions
result in a highly complex environment with solutions that are often difficult to scale, lack
flexibility, and require significant maintenance.

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EXHIBIT 5
Applications User devices IoT devices
Integration platform enabling
multi-cloud interoperability
Enterprise Systems
Source: Everest Group (2019)

Integration layer

Cloud integration
API Management ESB platforms

Multi-cloud environment

Infrastructure Cloud Network

Enterprises need a comprehensive component-based integration platform that enables

different cloud resources to seamlessly work in unison. Most enterprises have multiple
generations of technologies, such as Enterprise Service Buses (ESBs), data integration tools,
B2B gateway software, Managed File Transfer (MFT) platforms, cloud integration platforms,
and API management platforms. Enterprises need to reassess their approaches to
integration platforms along with their multi-cloud strategy to rationalize the number of
integration platforms. They have to select a combination of technologies that will optimally
resolve integration complexities while being cognizant of factors such as the technology
landscape, past investments, the talent skillset, cost, and management.

Containerization
An increasing number of enterprises see containers as the answer to multi-cloud
59% of enterprises are
interoperability and portability challenges. Containers allow enterprises to move freely
adopting containers for
among cloud environments and even back on-premise by enabling virtualization of
microservices1
applications and their dependencies. Platform-agnostic container solutions are key to
30% of enterprises are
achieving this level of flexibility so that enterprises can easily adapt as their needs evolve.
running microservices in
Platform-agnostic container solutions built on leading open source cloud frameworks could
their production
provide enterprises with the flexibility to work with any infrastructure or application type
environments1
and unify its applications – both legacy and new – under one platform.

Open cloud standards awareness

“An effort to produce a Whenever possible, enterprises should leverage standard APIs, protocols, and data formats.
cloud infrastructure that
One possible way to enable widespread multi-cloud interoperability is through
allows industry players to
standardization. Various standardization efforts are ongoing across the globe such as
cooperate in the
Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), Cloud Standards Coordination (ETSI),
development of
Advancing Storage and Information Technology (SNIA), CloudAudit, Cloud Security Alliance
interoperable modules is
(CSA), TC CLOUD, Object Management Group (OMG), and IEEE. Enterprise architects,
needed”
- IEEE, Issues on developers, and operations teams should be cognizant of cloud standards. Open APIs that
developing interoperable target multi-cloud interoperability and open protocols could be leveraged to create vendor-
cloud operations (2016) agnostic multi-cloud interoperability.

1 Everest Group research with 200 CXOs from large enterprises (more than US$ 1billion in revenues)

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Conceptualizing interoperability in multi-cloud

The dynamic nature of digital businesses will necessitate the adoption of a multi-cloud
model where each cloud deployment must interoperate. The framework outlined below
may help enterprises to conceptualize cloud interoperability.

EXHIBIT 6
Framework for implementing
multi-cloud interoperability
Source: Everest Group (2019)

Technology

Talent
Longevity

Collaboration

Technology
Enterprises need to refresh their outlook on existing and planned technology investments.
An interoperable multi-cloud needs to orchestrate legacy and newer technology
environments; enterprises need to prioritize which of the technology stacks need be
interoperated in a multi-cloud model. Force fitting interoperability across stacks can be
counterproductive.

Talent
As enterprises adopt an interoperable multi-cloud, their skill set mix will change
significantly. Multi-cloud complexity will continue to increase with the proliferation of
offerings by cloud providers. Technology complexity combined with a need to understand
business context will dramatically increase the need for cross-functional skills across
multiple clouds.

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EXHIBIT 7
Impact of automation
Talent model for multi-cloud Impact of increasing
multi-cloud complexity
Source: Everest Group (2019)
Talent expansion through new hiring and
reskilling of existing employees

`
Demand for human capital

Single cloud skills Interoperable multi-cloud

skill sets

Current environment Transition period Multi-cloud environment

Multi-cloud adoption timeline

Enterprises will need a focused approach to developing talent for an interoperable multi-
cloud, including reskilling/upskilling and hiring, new talent assessment models, investments
in training and development, and effective automation leverage.

Collaboration
The full benefits of interoperability will be elusive without internal and external
collaboration, in particular around two key components:
Stakeholder alignment – The first step is to this is bring together all key stakeholders – both
internal and external – to assess the environment and understand the importance of
interoperability. External stakeholders can include technology firms, service integrators,
and startups, among others.
Cultural change – Different teams should follow a uniform operating model to leverage the
best of all clouds. They should have the flexibility to leverage any cloud they want
(internal/external), as long as interoperability is a key decision criterion. The teams should
ensure that any application transformation keeps interoperability at the forefront.

Longevity
With increased enterprise adoption, multi-cloud will continue to evolve. Enterprises should
not approach their interoperable multi-cloud strategies from a single-point-in-time, but
instead recognize the need to be dynamic and continuously evolve. Multi-cloud 3.0 will be
characterized by omni-cloud adoption across all enterprises with high interoperability and a
focus on deriving business value from cloud and other adjacent technologies.

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EXHIBIT 8
Multi-cloud evolution
⚫ Workloads are designed, transformed,
Source: Everest Group (2019) and abstracted with multi-cloud as the
default operating model
⚫ Interoperability of workloads even
with applications outside organization
boundary walls
⚫ Focus across cloud layers and advanced Multi-cloud 3.0
technologies (e.g., native, AI/ML)
Value delivered to businesses

⚫ New workloads are designed grounds up to

ensure interoperability across clouds at a
line of business level
⚫ Legacy workloads are transformed for
integration compatibility Multi-cloud 2.0
⚫ Focus across cloud layers (IaaS, SaaS, etc.)

⚫ Existing workloads made interoperable across few clouds through

integration connectors at a unit level
Multi-cloud 1.0
⚫ Basic redesign/ bolt-on API to make workloads work across cloud
⚫ Focus typically on IaaS-centric interoperability

Evolution of multi-cloud

7 statements to inspire thinking

Enterprises can use the following 7 statements to inspire their thinking around how to
evaluate the need for an interoperable multi-cloud.
1. We are evaluating moving our workloads to a multi-cloud environment
2. We are already on multi-cloud but are not getting the business benefits we expected
3. We are not happy with our cloud provider and are evaluating alternative options
4. Different workloads in our environment work better on different clouds
5. Our cloud application landscape has become too complicated to manage
6. Multi-cloud has not enabled us to break the process silos
7. Our senior leadership has mandated that we have an environment with more than one
cloud
If you agree with statement 1, you must consider interoperability before migrating
applications to cloud.
If you agree with at least three statements from 2-7, you should consider making your
multi-cloud environment interoperable. You can leverage a mix of transformation levers
identified in brownfield cloud transformation and greenfield cloud build.

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About Everest Group

Everest Group is a consulting and research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, and
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This document is for informational purposes only, and it is being provided “as is” and “as available” without any warranty of any kind,
including any warranties of completeness, adequacy, or fitness for a particular purpose. Everest Group is not a legal or inve stment
adviser; the contents of this document should not be construed as legal, tax, or investment advice. This document should not be used as
a substitute for consultation with professional advisors, and Everest Group disclaims liability for any actions or decisions not to act that
are taken as a result of any material in this publication.

This study was funded, in part, by Accenture

For more information about Everest Group, please contact:

+1-214-451-3000
info@everestgrp.com

For more information about this topic please contact the author(s):
Yugal Joshi, Vice President
Yugal.joshi@everestgrp.com

Mukesh Ranjan, Senior Analyst

Mukesh.ranjan@everestgrp.com

Zachariah K Chirayil, Senior Analyst

Zachariah.Chirayil@everestgrp.com

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