While each cloud provider does its best to make networking simple across clouds, all have very nuanced differences and varied best practices for approaching the same problem, says Ed Wood, global enterprise network lead at business advisory firm Accenture. This makes being able to create enterprise-ready, secured networks across the cloud challenging, he adds.
Wasim believes that a lack of intelligent data utilization at crucial stages, from data ingestion to proactive management, further complicates the process. “The sheer scale of managing resources, coupled with the dynamic nature of cloud environments, makes it challenging to achieve optimal performance and efficiency.”
Making network management even more challenging is a lack of clarity on roles and responsibilities. This can be attributed to an absence of agreement on shared responsibility models, Wasim says. As a result, stakeholders, including customers, cloud service providers, and any involved third parties, might each hold different views on responsibility and accountability regarding data compliance, controls, and cloud operations management.
“Furthermore, with multicloud, organizations are seeing a convergence in roles and job descriptions,” he notes. For example, a network engineer may be required to oversee the entire cloud infrastructure instead of just a single localized network. “If an organization doesn’t have the right talents and skillsets, managing the network in a multicloud environment may become challenging.”
Frustrations and blind spots
Effective multicloud network management can also be derailed by mistakes made by team members.
“With today’s ease of access to cloud platforms, virtually anyone in an organization can create significant governance blind spots, often leading to shadow IT-type risks,” warns Orshaw. “With virtually anyone able to deploy cloud elements, the effort required for adequate governance becomes a major frustration, emphasizing the vital need for a comprehensive, organization-wide multicloud strategy.” Such a strategy forces IT to deploy an efficient and dependable multicloud network management platform. “The difficulty is in finding platforms that have similar strengths across all cloud providers.”
