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Experience Multicloud the Way it was Meant to Be white paper
How organizations can harness a multicloud ecosystem to unlock their data’s full business value.
01 Jun, 2023
minute read
Table of Contents:
Data volume is growing daily at organizations around the globe. IDC predicts that the collective sum of the world’s data will grow to over 220ZB by 2026.1 The Seagate® Rethink Data report shows that, just in the space of the next two years, enterprise data is expected to grow 42.2% annually. In lockstep with that growth is the need to harness data for analytics and intelligence that drive innovation and improve business outcomes.
Which brings us to how companies achieve these outcomes—the cloud. A single, ubiquitous term that encompasses a vast landscape of unique storage architectures with equally unique benefits and challenges. The cloud we’ll focus on in this paper—and the one that a growing number of organizations are turning to—is multicloud.
Multicloud relates to deploying cloud environments from more than one cloud vendor with the same architecture. So for instance, you can have two private clouds from two vendors. Or, two public clouds from two vendors. This is contrast to deployments such as hybrid cloud, which use both public and private cloud vendors.
Seagate’s The Multicloud Maturity Report, which provides insights from a global web survey administered in early 2022 of senior industry leaders, revealed that 82% of the 500 respondents already use 2+ public cloud infrastructure service providers (excluding Software as a Service, or SaaS)—and this figure is expected to increase to 93% in two years. Suffice it to say, multicloud is on the rise.
Here we’ll examine the merits of multicloud, the challenges it poses for businesses, and how organizations can harness this ecosystem to unlock their data’s full business value.
The multicloud is attractive for good reason. It allows organizations to match solutions to business and organizational needs by combining the scalability and flexibility of various public cloud services with the predictable economics of scale that private cloud can provide. When executed successfully, businesses can benefit from increased data protection, flexibility, and accessibility. The problem is successful execution is tough because of two primary constraints. Complexity and cost. Let’s talk about each.
As data continues to boom and organizations do their best to wrangle it, much like a spider web, multicloud ecosystems are growing ever more expansive and intricate—and, therefore, ever more complicated. The Multicloud Maturity Report illustrates this reality by revealing that 56% of organizations storing hot/warm data on cloud infrastructure say that data is accessed by applications that run in a different environment on at least a daily basis. More than half of the respondents say they manage 100+ intercloud integrations. And not surprisingly, 76% say monitoring, measuring, and ensuring SLA adherence for applications that rely on these intercloud integrations is challenging.
All of this complexity equates to one thing: a multicloud fog. Where data is too often siloed, workload portability is limited, compliance risks abound, and companies are forced to double-down on security and resiliency to minimize weak links.
And it doesn’t stop there. Another result of this complexity is the often inscrutable and volatile data-related costs, which further intensify friction. Most cloud repositories have raised up tall walls, making flexible data movement nearly impossible. When data wants to get in—that’s easy. But leaving is another story. Between storage media costs, high egress fees, unpredictable API charges, and ambiguous pricing models, companies struggle to move data to where it’s needed, or where it can render the most business value. In response, a vast majority of businesses end up deleting otherwise valuable data.
The consequence is that businesses using the multicloud often face a lose-lose-lose situation: They keep all their data but don’t actually use it because of high costs. They make full use of their data but pay massive fees that slow or halt other areas of the business. Or they get rid of data (since they can’t use it anyway) and risk losing out on potential insights and business value.
This is an unsavory set of options for any organization that wants to remain competitive. The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way. There are three key storage issues that, when addressed and optimized, can free your data from the confines of a multicloud mess.
Data is critical to business strategies. IT and business leaders need to extract value from legacy data and seamlessly create, store, move, and analyze new data to reveal insights and create new revenue streams. But TCO is a challenging issue when it comes to storing data in the cloud. Costs to consider include overall storage, read access, write access, list and create operations, data retrieval, and support. In the multicloud, where exorbitant API charges and egress fees dominate, IT leaders are faced with trying to budget and innovate while dealing with wildly unpredictable bills and consistent overages.
At best, this kind of inefficiency stifles growth. At worst, it kills it. Therefore it’s critical that organizations, especially those that already have or are scaling towards petabytes of data, search for cost-effective solutions that exclude API charges and egress fees, and that offer clear, consistent, predictable pricing
Companies that innovate the most, and the fastest, in the multicloud have three things in common:
In other words, their data is flexible—which in turn means their business can be nimble and innovative. The thing to remember is, simply amassing data doesn’t lead to innovation because data alone is not insight. What does convert data into insight is access—easy, quick, built-in access for its intended users. Without access, there is no insight. Without insight, there can be no innovation. It’s that simple. And also, that complex.
Here’s the kicker though. Flexibility is a direct result of controlled costs. If moving and accessing data sends your budget into a frenzy of API charges and egress fees then flexibility goes out the door, taking innovation with it.
Today’s economy is driven by data, meaning companies that have the most data and activate it the fastest are the ones winning. As we’ve discussed, cost and flexibility play a huge role in your ability to do this.
Remember when we mentioned 220ZB of predicted data growth by 2026? Once that hits, some businesses will be prepared. Others won’t be. Those that are will have infrastructure in place that allows them to efficiently and affordably capture, store, move, and manage loads upon loads of data. For these businesses, a massive figure like 220ZB is a boon because they’ll be able to convert the large majority of their data into business value. This in turn keeps them competitive. However, for those who don’t have the right infrastructure in place, this level of exponential data growth promises to be a burden, and not a small one. If current trends are any indication of the future, then the unfortunate truth is that most businesses will fall into the latter category.
Here’s what the trends say: Today, 44% of enterprise data goes uncaptured. Of the 56% that is captured, 43% goes unused. This means that only 32% of available data is put to work. The remaining 68% goes unleveraged. In other words, there’s an absurd level of loss taking place when it comes to business data and its potential value.
Now, take these numbers and factor in 220ZB of massive data explosion, as well as the increasing need for a (currently broken) multicloud ecosystem to handle this explosion, and things start to look like one of those disaster movies—where a tidal wave of data is headed this way and there sits your business in a rickety boat, frantically paddling to no avail.
At Seagate, this is where we yell, “CUT!” and declare that the scene sucked and it’s time for another take. Why? Because this isn’t how the future should play out. In this scenario, innovation and business success are limited. As a result, so is human potential.
Over the past 40+ years, we’ve talked with thousands upon thousands of business leaders across the globe from every industry you could imagine. We’ve listened and learned about the constraints they face and their data disaster stories, and we’ve used these findings to inspire and shape solutions that help turn the tides. Seagate CEO Dave Mosely summed this up perfectly when he said, “Innovation is not driven by trends, but by the need to create more value under constraints—and there are constraints everywhere. Access to the full value of data is one of them.”
The messiness of today’s multicloud is just that—a constraint. One you can, in fact, overcome. We’ll tell you how in a moment, but first, let us tell you a story.
Here at Seagate, we’ve battled our own fair share of data-related headaches in the multicloud, namely around TCO and security. Other hurdles have included a lack of long-term data recovery options, confusing pricing models from backup storage vendors, and of course, managing data sets that grow bigger by the day.
As users of the multicloud, what we’ve experienced is that most public clouds don’t support big data analytics from an economics perspective. Thanks to complicated storage tiers and additional charges for moving and accessing data, we’ve thrown away more of ours than we’d like to admit—all because it was too expensive to store. The irony of course is that our business’s sole focus is to empower people’s data through storage. Why couldn’t the multicloud return the favor to us? Irritated by a lack of solutions and anxious over our own data future, we were left with one option: build a solution ourselves.
Seagate® Lyve™ Cloud offers a simple, trusted, and efficient cloud backup storage solution with a simple pricing structure and zero charges for API calls or egress fees. Designed for use with the most common backup applications, Lyve Cloud provides S3 compatibility and end-to-end data encryption at rest and in motion. Utilizing Lyve Cloud for backup, with scale-out object storage as a service, makes it easier and more cost effective to manage exponential data growth while creating a single, easyto-access data repository to fuel advanced analytics.
Here’s how it tackles every challenge:
Unlike most cloud providers, Lyve Cloud does not charge for API calls or data egress, so users can access more data without getting hit with additional fees. In addition, Lyve Cloud’s multi-regional availability, paired with industry-leading data durability (always on with four nines uptime and 29 nines data durability) and encryption, ensures data is always on and available without costly delays. Lyve Cloud enables enterprises to use S3-compatible storage—even for primary backup data. Built-in object immutability protects it from cyber security threats such as ransomware.
Lyve Cloud’s simple, capacity-based pricing supports limitless scalability without breaking the bank. With zero charges for API calls or egress fees, bill anxiety gives way to predictable economics based on usage. This allows backup capacity to scale on demand without financial risk. Expedited data access and deletions are included as well. When it comes to business continuity, restores can’t wait. With Lyve Cloud, there are no costly delays and users have the full data management flexibility required for efficient data protection and disaster recovery.
Lyve Cloud helps businesses migrate all backup data to where it’s needed for activation. This allows organizations to regain access to their data and turn a stagnant cost center into a valuable business asset. Once data is ingested, it becomes available for data analytics, empowering organizations to exploit the inherent potential and worth of previously inaccessible data.
Lyve Managed Migration services provide a simple, streamlined process for migrating high volumes of data from any aging storage media and data format directly to a private, hybrid, or public cloud platform in a secure and methodical way. By consolidating data in a centralized digital repository, organizations can protect it from physical deterioration, theft, and other security risks. Furthermore, they can unlock the potential to access, restore, mine, analyze, monetize, and deploy it in ways never before possible.
Lyve Cloud adheres to the most stringent, globally recognized data security standards and is ISO 27001:2013 and SOC2 certified. Safeguard data with ransomware protection, enterprise-grade identity management support, automatic data replication, and data encryption at rest and in flight. Seamless integration with leading industry backup software providers offers an additional layer of security that allows enterprises to seamlessly back up, scale out, and protect their data from cyberthreats.
Lyve Cloud S3 storage features object immutability—the ultimate feature for ransomware defense—delivering tape-like air-gap data protection. This, combined with automatic replication, provides ultimate protection for stored backups.
Users can utilize Lyve Cloud with whatever backup regime and/or software provider they prefer. Lyve Cloud’s S3-compatible interface is certified with leading backup software providers, including Veritas, CommVault, Rubrik, Veeam, IBM Spectrum Protect, Cohesity, and many more. See our software partner list for complete details.
Lyve Cloud provides one repository for all cloud/colocation and archive backup copies while also giving users greater flexibility to back up and restore data on premises or in the cloud (hybrid cloud or multicloud), including disaster recovery.
The number of people living on this planet has surpassed 7.8 billion, with more and more of us working from home and engaging with technologies centered around IoT, edge computing, and AI. Data proliferation (we’ll say it again, 220ZB by 2026) is happening whether any of us are ready or not.
Mining and analyzing this data can open doors to a new wave of innovation, higher operational efficiency, and new sources of revenue. In order to harness this much data and garner this much value, we’ll absolutely need the multicloud, and we’ll need it to be optimized. Not messy. Not costly. Optimized.
That’s why a STaaS solution like Lyve Cloud should be central to any multicloud strategy. It simplifies the complex cloud management system; it enables organizations to store data they might have historically been forced to delete; and as a result, business leaders can cost-effectively make the most of their data—spurring better outcomes and greater opportunities for growth.
