Multi-cloud is the future of enterprise

By Andy Nallappan, Chief Technology Officer & Head of Software Business Operations, Broadcom

This is a continuation of Broadcom’s blog series: 2023 Tech Trends That Transform IT. Stay tuned for future blogs that dive into the technology behind these trends from more of Broadcom’s industry-leading experts.

Multi-cloud is the future of enterprise IT. The evidence is overwhelming.

A recent report reveals that more than 80% of enterprises surveyed have a multi-cloud strategy and nearly that number (78%) already have workloads deployed in more than three public clouds. Enterprises are realizing the need to customize their cloud infrastructures to better fit their business needs. The continuing acceleration of that customization in the year ahead is why multi-cloud is one of the top technology trends transforming technology in 2023.

The reasons are not hard to discern. As organizations continue transitioning their networking and IT infrastructures to cloud, it is becoming hard to ignore the opportunities and benefits of a multi-cloud environment. A multi-cloud approach allows the flexibility to manage and protect data across different environments—private, public, and sovereign—as needed. Maintaining this freedom, choice, control, and agility is crucial for future growth and critical for maintaining compliance with regulatory and statutory requirements for enterprises operating at global scale.

Another factor contributing to multi-cloud deployments is evolving regulatory compliance, which is accelerating the sovereign cloud—a cloud environment housed within the jurisdiction. Europe has strict regulations that you’ve likely heard of, such as EBAG, DORA, IDT, and now recently introduced: ECR, the European Cyber Resilience Act. Multi-cloud deployments allow full flexibility to adjust to changes to regulatory changes.

And a final factor contributing to multi-cloud deployments is a business-driven initiative to accelerate the reduction of how many data centers a business is running. By consolidating and reducing the number of data centers, businesses set themselves up to quickly deliver on evolving customer and market demands through technology, especially technology bolstered by artificial intelligence. Businesses want to move quickly and effectively to the cloud, while managing costs and risks, without having to refactor their entire workload—especially back-end platforms and solutions that have been working well for decades.

One size does not fit all

There are several reasons why this trend to multi-cloud will accelerate in 2023. The reality is that being locked into a single cloud vendor, or a single type of cloud infrastructure does not offer the flexibility needed to control costs, maintain control over information, or the agility necessary to operate successfully in a world already growing bigger in providers—and evolving types—of clouds.

A multi-cloud environment avoids these pitfalls while enhancing the capabilities to move across public cloud, data centers, and edge infrastructures. Multi-cloud is also cost-effective. It provides enterprises with the freedom to select the best products and services for their business needs. In short, multi-cloud will become the inevitable, as well as ideal cloud networking environment for managing and supporting the decentralized and distributed resources, assets, services, and workforces that compose the real-world reality of our post-pandemic digital age.

A shifting conversation

 Another key driver of this trend in 2023 will be the transition of talking about cloud from a technology discussion to a business outcomes conversation. Rather than enterprises reinventing the wheel each time to create their own cloud, there is a growing awareness that time to value can be greatly accelerated by sharing key components of multi-cloud infrastructures. Key to this business-driven discussion is the acceptance and evolution of the idea some call industry cloud platforms or vertical industry clouds. These are multi-cloud infrastructures with built-in, modular functionality tailored to a specific vertical industry.

Vertical industries such as banking, healthcare, Telco, and manufacturing will lead this movement. It will allow them to share an agile platform already supported by a portfolio of baked-in, industry-specific, prepackaged business capabilities directly relevant for their individual industries. These modular components can then be easily customized or swapped in-or-out to fit the individual organization’s business operations or needs. It is this understanding that will shift the cloud conversation away from technology-first discussion to that of business outcomes first for its obvious potential value as a platform and driver of new business innovation.

Think of these multi-clouds as providing prefabricated industry-specific Lego pieces containing key functions that can be assembled or composed the way a customer wants or needs. Another way is to think of them as providing a cloud platform containing the kinds of built-in, but customizable capabilities a top CRM provider or HR software provider offer their customers. But on a much grander scale that goes far beyond any single vertical Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution.

Only multi-cloud infrastructures offer this kind of industry-specific or vertical cloud platform adaptability. Multi-cloud allows enterprises to make the leap from the cloud services with which we are all familiar to creating new cloud platforms with the agility to far more easily and quickly be adapted to new business opportunities, changing business circumstances, or technology innovations.

Adopting a business or industry multi-cloud model will also speed the transition to cloud for many organizations. It will allow those organizations to take advantage of the plug-and-play aspects of a multi-cloud’s prepackaged, modular components.

The future in multi-cloud

Industry-model multi-cloud infrastructures will offer many enterprises the best solution for a decentralized networking environment. The benefits of these industry-specific clouds include:

• More adaptability
• More business functionality
• More innovation

Multi-cloud is the future of enterprise IT. And when integrated with sovereign cloud, multi-cloud will allow organizations to deliver differentiated services at scale while remaining secure and in compliance with regulatory frameworks around the globe. Enterprises recognize that because of this, multi-cloud will help their organizations deliver stronger business value. It is the reason enterprises are accelerating their transition to multi-cloud infrastructures this year and why it is a top trend transforming IT in 2023.

To learn more about tech trends transforming IT in 2023, visit Broadcom’s blog.

About Andy Nallappan:

Andy is the Chief Technology Officer and Head of Software Business Operations for Broadcom. He oversees the DevOps, SaaS Platform & Operations, and Marketing for the software business divisions within Broadcom.