Multi-cloud needs mavens

When deploying cloud infrastructure today, many users will employ multiple cloud services from different vendors in order to gain cost and performance benefits. Multi-cloud, however, can be difficult to deploy and manage in the real world.

Moving to multi-cloud can bring up a multitude of challenges when trying to use numerous cloud systems -- public, private, and hybrid -- to create a heterogeneous whole. This was one of the topics for discussion in Silverlinings first virtual event, Cloud Cover: The current and future state of cloud infrastructure, which started Tuesday.

In the “Making sense of multi-cloud” panel, participants Bryan Ashley, VP of product management at Aviatrix, Nathan Jones, senior cloud architect at Brink's, and Nadeem Uraizee, senior director of strategic planning at Red Hat, discussed the pleasures and pitfalls of multi-cloud with Liz Coyne, managing editor at Silverlinings.

One aspect came through strongly. There is a skills gap when dealing with multi-cloud environments. It is very difficult to find staffing able to deal with a multi-cloud situation, Brink's’ Jones said. 

“They are a unicorn,” he opined.

This is unsurprising. Cloud engineers dealing with multi-cloud situations will need fluency in the major public systems (AWS, Microsoft and Google). They will need to be able to combine that with private cloud and on-premise IT knowledge. This doesn’t even take into account the requisite security certifications. 

The panelists also noted that all the public cloud providers have slightly different APIs (application programming interfaces), which can add to the difficulty when managing a multi-cloud setup.

So, with all the tech layoffs hanging over us, maybe a multi-cloud maven is something to be?


Tune in for Day 2 of Cloud Cover here. Registration is free.