Cloud Agnostic Data Platforms — How Enterprises Can Unleash the Full Potential for Their Benefit
As enterprises continue to adopt multi-cloud strategy to double down on data and platform flexibility, the evolution of cross cloud or cloud agnostic toolset has gained tremendous momentum. In this article, we will delve into the concept of cloud agnosticism, its benefits, challenges and possible mitigations or best practices along with recommended tools/components in each layer of a modern data fabric platform.
What is cloud agnostic architecture?
A cloud-agnostic strategy allows companies to create and manage their systems and applications such that they can run and be maintained on any cloud platform rather than being specially built for usage on a single platform. This means easy service portability without/limited interruptions. Irrespective of the movement you get the same results because the tools do not rely on the underlying custom features of a specific platform. It offers companies opportunities for scalability and flexibility, along with customization options to meet specific business requirements. As more than 93% of companies already rely on multiple cloud strategy, it makes absolute sense to invest in agnostic architecture upfront which will help them to save money and switch cloud services if situation arises.
What constitutes a cloud agnostic architecture?
Cloud agnostic architecture is neutral toward the use of a specific cloud. It utilizes open-source technologies and vendor provided composable/portable components. The architecture is built so that switching providers is easily possible. It also supports multiple cloud providers simultaneously.
How does a modern data fabric look like?
A modern data fabric ensures a solid technology base while focusing on the required core capabilities by evaluating the existing data management tools.
How does a composable cross cloud component map look like?
Following is what can be considered a model/indicative component map for a cloud agnostic data platform. Again this is just to give an idea of the components available in the market and widely used but not limited to. There are a lot more options available in each category and we should take a prudent call based on organizational dynamics and approved set of tooling etc.
Important considerations between cloud-agnostic and cloud native architecture
Portability
There is no lock-in to a particular provider and applications can be moved anywhere for cloud agnostic tool/platforms whereas for cloud native ones, organizations need to undergo complete re-write subjected to impact analysis of each functionality and tasks.
Flexibility
A cloud agnostic strategy allows you to switch cloud providers with minimal headache if pricing, performance or offerings change. It also means you can take a multi-cloud approach which sees workloads split between providers.
Vendor lock-in
Vendor lock-in refers to the challenge companies face when they become too dependent on a specific cloud provider’s proprietary services and technologies. This dependence can hinder an organization’s ability to migrate to another provider or bring workloads back on-premises, leading to limited flexibility and potential cost escalations.
Cost optimization
Cost is one of the prime parameter for choosing Cloud agnostic architecture as pricing models often change between cloud providers and hence cloud-agnostic applications can be migrated easily to run in the cloud platform that delivers the best cost savings.
Time to market
For cloud native apps, time-to-market for applications can be sped up with pre-built templates, tools, and infrastructure that is ready-to-use.
But because cloud-agnostic applications and features are generally relatively complex, it can take longer to complete projects.
Resilience
Spreading systems and workloads across more than one cloud platform avoids the risk of redundancy and downtime if one encounters problems.
Complex Management
Managing a cloud-agnostic data platform can be more complex and resource-intensive than using cloud-native solutions. You may need to invest more time and effort in configuration, maintenance, and troubleshooting.
Drawbacks of cloud-agnostic strategy
Security and Compliance
Achieving consistent security and compliance standards across different cloud providers can be challenging with a cloud-agnostic approach. Each cloud provider has its own security tools and compliance certifications, and ensuring a consistent level of security can be more difficult.
Cost Management
Managing costs efficiently in a cloud-agnostic architecture is vital. Different providers offer various pricing models and cost structures, making it crucial to optimize resource allocation and usage.
Performance Optimization
Achieving optimal performance in a cloud-agnostic architecture is challenging. Each provider has unique performance characteristics, and balancing workload distribution across multiple providers can be complex.
Interoperability between cloud native components
Cloud native disparate elements ties together into a cohesive ecosystem and any 3rd party/cloud agnostic tool need to coagulate well in terms of interplay between technology, operations, and business objectives to realize end benefits to customer.
Key strategies to mitigate few of the challenges is outlined below:
Use of containerization
Container technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes are help you to package the source code together with its libraries, runtimes, and dependencies, which, in turn, allows the application to be ported from one cloud environment to another without any conflict.
Unified Security/Governance
As applications and platforms are distributed over different cloud platforms and over both physical and virtual environments, it’s absolutely critical to have single pane of view for platform governance in terms of different security policies and in enforcing the same.
Managed databases
By using managed database services from major cloud providers like AWS, Google, and Microsoft Azure, you can easily manage the highest volume workloads and smoothly migrate them between providers — with automatic patching and upgrades, backups and failover, as well as high availability and durability.
Prioritized Automation Strategy
As cross cloud strategy inherently increases cross deployment across cloud service providers, an automate-first approach is key. Infrastructure should be spinnable with little to no manual effort and testing and integration managed through a scheduled CI pipeline requiring approvals.
Use of Open standards
Use of open standards and standardized set of tools are vital to being cloud-agnostic. It helps enterprises across the entire multi-cloud environment to simplify and standardize the overall operation and offer consistency in performance and security.
Conclusion
Well it may sound cliché but the best approach depends on your specific needs and priorities. If fast time-to-market and low infrastructure management overhead are your current priorities, a cloud native approach makes sense. However, if your organization is looking to improve its long-term resilience and diversify risks, a cloud agnostic approach can bring in longer-term benefits. Also, Cloud-native and cloud-agnostic methodologies are not mutually exclusive, and there’s no obligation to fully commit to one strategy. Based on feasibility, different business teams can adopt their own strategy and later gradually transition to an alternate architecture though it might incur substantial amount of efforts/costs.
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