The problem with cloud concentration

The cloud has become essential to the smooth running of any modern business. In addition to speed and scalability, it enables an increasingly mobile workforce to access data and resources wherever they are located. Security might have been one of the major concerns previously, but now most organizations are confident the tools and processes implemented in cloud infrastructure can deliver robust protection.

What is cloud concentration risk?

While cloud adoption is highly beneficial, it does raise the risk of cloud concentration, where businesses become overly reliant on one specific cloud service provider. If an enterprise puts all its critical data and applications into one cloud, a single outage or cyber attack could have disastrous consequences, not just for that organization but for partners or customers that depend on it.

Cloud service providers suggest that the risk can be reduced by distributed computing and diversifying within a single cloud environment. But this does not fully address the issue, and enterprises must take a strategic decision to mitigate risk and avoid having a single point of failure.

Is multi-cloud the answer?

Adopting a multi-cloud strategy is the obvious answer to over-reliance on a single provider. Many enterprises are already exploring this option, which allows them to select services from multiple cloud service providers and mitigate risk, while still driving innovation.

But just using multiple clouds is not, in itself, a complete solution. Enterprises cannot easily switch between cloud providers, so individual workloads and applications are still siloed on single clouds. Spreading workloads across multiple clouds is also seen as a complex task.

A further step is required to enable cloud-to-cloud communication and automation of interconnection, which will streamline the multi-cloud approach.

Adding resilient connectivity

To mitigate the risk of cloud concentration and to simplify the management of workloads running across multiple clouds, enterprises need secure, automated, resilient interconnectivity through a cloud exchange to support their multi-cloud strategies. Connectivity to and between cloud service providers is often overlooked, but it is essential to ensure services can be up and running quickly in the event of an outage or attack. 

If you’re looking to adopt a multi-cloud strategy supported by resilient connectivity, see our cloud connectivity checklist.