Executive Brief 5 Steps to Transformation Success with Multi-Cloud Management1

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

5 Steps to Transformation Success with Multi-Cloud Management

When it comes to the global enterprise cloud adoption, it is no longer a question of moving to the cloud, but which cloud to use

for your different workloads. In fact, according to a study from IDC, 77.5% of organizations plan to use three or more clouds by

2020 (Footnote #1). The challenge for organizations today is to determine how to manage the increasing cloud complexity without

sacrificing any of the cloud benefits.

Managing Multiple Clouds Demands a Multi-Cloud Management Strategy

Multi-cloud strategy is about leveraging the most appropriate

environment for your infrastructure and applications to meet

the needs of your organization. By utilizing a combination of

cloud solutions often from different cloud providers you can

match the needs of applications, VMs and workloads to the

most appropriate cloud. This ultimately establishes a flexible and

customized architectural foundation for your enterprise. Multi-

cloud strategies give enterprises flexibility to choose the right

environment to support the unique requirements of different

applications, manage costs and avoid vendor lock-in. Beyond

flexibility and scalability, multi-cloud strategies are also being

employed as a disaster recovery solution as well as a foundation

of agile business practices.

Enterprises using multiple clouds and infrastructures

today are increasingly challenged with:

• Managing security policies in a unified manner

• Efficient governance of application builds,

deployments, management

• Delivering rapid support and delivery of LOB

requirements

• Transparency and cost control — particularly for

chargebacks to LOBs

• Compliance and regulatory risk management

MULTI-CLOUD CHALLENGES

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Strategies for Multi-Cloud Success

We recommend these 5 tips to maximize the impact of your multi-cloud approach.

Match Apps and Workloads to the Best Cloud Platform.Each company, business unit or even application

has its own unique set of requirements so what

works for one doesn’t necessarily work for all. The

race to the cloud doesn’t mean that you should

move everything to the cloud today. Evaluate which

infrastructure is right for your requirements right now

and make sure it is flexible enough to allow you to

change your strategy without disruption in the future.

This means avoiding getting locked into one vendor

or one platform. It’s not about adopting 100% cloud,

but consuming cloud services when and where it

makes sense to augment your current investments.

Maximize efficiency and keep costs low. Understanding that the purpose of cloud is to

maximize efficiency means that as you deploy

applications across different platforms, it should

not be at the expense of efficient processes and

workload management. Ensuring governance across

your ecosystem must be a priority to reduce risks.

Drive governance through automation policies. Streamlining cloud service management and

applying tools that automate application lifecycle

management, monitoring, patching and other tasks

means less manual oversight and coordination.

This will ensure that applications are deployed and

managed according to company policies, allowing

the IT department to spend their time more wisely.

Collect and track performance data. Potential network issues need to be monitored and

addressed, which makes working with a cloud

management provider essential for some

companies. When tools are tracking data on all the

cloud services, vendors and solutions, companies

can target issues and their causes.

Keep an eye on utilization and costs. As your company deploys incremental applications

and services to various clouds, it becomes harder

to predict and control usage without manual

intervention and provisioning. This can drive your

costs up especially with pay-as-you-use pricing. It’s

important to have visibility of what is being used

and by whom to keep costs in check using unified

management tools that enable you to monitor

and manage usage across all platforms for billing

internal user groups for their usage.

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Multi-cloud environments are here to stay. Developing best practices and utilizing platforms such as CenturyLink Cloud Application

Manager which lets you manage workloads across any cloud or infrastructure are essential in enabling your digital transformation.

Leveraging managed services when and where they are needed to fill resource gaps can help you accelerate project planning and

implementation timelines.

#1: IDC: Effective Multicloud Management Strategies Support Digital Transformation and Business/IT Collaboration. August 2016, Mary Johnston Turner, US41672016e

To learn more about the CenturyLink multi-cloud management solutions, including Cloud Application Manager, visit centurylink.com/multicloud.