Your applications are multicloud. Is your data ready?

Organizations are embracing multicloud strategies to gain flexibility, access best-of-breed services and reduce dependency on a single technology ecosystem. Applications can increasingly be deployed across AWS, Google Cloud and other platforms.

But there is an often-overlooked challenge: the application may be portable, while the data is not.

When critical enterprise data becomes tightly coupled to one cloud, organizations can face significant complexity when moving workloads, establishing disaster recovery, adopting new technologies or responding to changing business requirements.

True multicloud resilience depends on application mobility and data mobility working together.

Data is becoming the anchor

Modern technologies such as containers, infrastructure as code and automated deployment pipelines have made application infrastructure increasingly portable.

Data is different.

Moving large volumes of enterprise data between environments can require significant time, network capacity, operational coordination and security controls.

This creates an important question for technology leaders: If your application needed to run in another cloud tomorrow, could its data securely follow it?

Organizations need to consider not only where data is stored, but also how it can be accessed and protected across environments.

What a multicloud data strategy should account for

A resilient multicloud strategy treats data as an enterprise asset, rather than as something tied to a particular cloud platform. That means looking beyond where data is stored to consider where it needs to be available, how quickly it may need to move and what protections must follow it.

These guiding principles can help organizations build a more flexible and manageable data environment.

1. Start with business and recovery requirements

Not every dataset needs to be portable or replicated across multiple environments. Assess application dependencies, business criticality, recovery objectives and regulatory requirements to determine which data needs greater mobility.

This makes decisions about migration, disaster recovery, modernization, analytics and AI more deliberate. It can also help avoid the cost and complexity of trying to move or replicate everything everywhere.

2. Consider application and data placement separately

Cloud decisions do not have to lock organizations into a single choice about where data resides. An architecture that considers application placement separately from data placement can preserve flexibility as business and technology needs change.

Consistent data-management capabilities across cloud environments can support that flexibility. Google Cloud NetApp Volumes and Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP are examples of cloud-native services that support data management across Google Cloud and AWS.

3. Build visibility across distributed environments

As data spreads across clouds, visibility matters as much as mobility. Technology leaders need to understand where data resides, how it is being used, which copies exist and whether protection and replication policies are being applied consistently.

A unified management approach can make it easier to oversee data across cloud and on-premises environments. NetApp BlueXP, for example, provides a common management experience for NetApp storage and data services across hybrid and multicloud environments.

4. Design for resilience without unnecessary duplication

Multicloud resilience does not necessarily mean running every application in multiple clouds at the same time. It means having options when responding to an outage, migrating a workload or adapting to changing business requirements.

The right approach depends on the workload. Some applications may require cross-cloud data protection and recovery. For others, a well-designed recovery approach or the ability to move data when needed may be sufficient.

5. Build security and governance into the architecture

Data mobility without governance can create more copies, more risk and more complexity. Consider security and governance from the start, including encryption, identity and access controls, monitoring, connectivity and recovery policies.

The goal is not to make data available everywhere. It is to make the right data available in the right environment, securely and when the business needs it.

From multicloud infrastructure to multicloud resilience

Multicloud should provide organizations with choice—not create another layer of dependency.

As enterprises modernize applications and adopt AI, analytics and cloud-native services, the ability to securely access, protect and move data across environments will become even more important.

The next evolution of multicloud is connecting applications, data, security and operations into a cohesive architecture.

The question is therefore changing from:

“Which cloud should we use?”

to:

“How can we give the business the freedom to use the right cloud without the data becoming the constraint?”

By bringing cloud transformation and data capabilities together with NetApp technologies, organizations can build a more portable, governed and resilient data foundation across clouds.

Learn more about our alliance with NetApp and how we help organizations modernize and manage their data environments.