by badminton | Feb 11, 2021 | Cloud
Multi-cloud is the use of more than one cloud platform that each delivers a specific application or service. A multi-cloud architecture can be made up of two or more public or private clouds to achieve a business’s IT goals.
What is the difference between hybrid cloud and multi-cloud?
There are several distinct differences between Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud architectures.
Traditionally ‘Hybrid cloud’ has meant the combination of private (either on-premises or hosted in a datacentre) and public cloud infrastructure, with application tools used to orchestrate and deploy workloads and manage the balance between the two.
Multi-cloud by contrast has more of a strategic emphasis. Enterprises use multiple cloud providers to meet different business requirements. At its most granular, multi-cloud is made up of various IaaS, PaaS and SaaS services with the cloud-native applications being the most mature, which are built up from containers and microservices, and provided by different cloud providers.
The main difference between the two is ‘Hybrid cloud’ refers to multiple cloud platforms, multi-cloud refers to multiple cloud services or vendors.
Benefits of a multi-cloud approach?
Many businesses nowadays have adopted a multi-cloud strategy by deploying applications and services across several cloud environments. There are many reasons for this, including:
Remove Vendor Lock-In – one of the most common reasons organisations adopt a multi-cloud strategy is the desire not to lock into any particular cloud provider. Enterprises recognise that no one provider can be everything to everyone. A multi-cloud approach gives organisations the flexibility to identify and partner with the vendors that have best-of-breed solutions that best align to their business needs.
Improved Performance – organisations with a wide range of cloud-based workloads can minimise latency and other performance barriers, such as packet loss, by investing in multiple cloud providers closest to where the applications and users are.
Compliance Management– Data governance often requires customer data to be held in different locations. Using a multi-cloud strategy improves adherence to such policies.
High Availability and Resilience – All cloud providers, even hyperscale ones with multiple geographically dispersed, redundant datacentres – suffer outages from time to time. If organisations put their dependency only on one cloud provider, they run the risk of their mission-critical applications becoming unavailable. A multi-cloud strategy allows for better security, failover, and disaster recovery – and resilience.
Challenges
Although a multi-cloud strategy has its advantages such as greater flexibility and scalability, it can also cause complexity in deployment and management, including:
- Security and governance are more complicated. There are more “moving parts” which may create resiliency issues.
- Organisations could suffer a paradox of choice when having to select the right cloud products and services.
- Management complexity could become a problem especially if multi-cloud is adopted in an ad hoc manner rather than been planned from the ground up.
- Organisations could experience perimeter dissolution.In a single cloud environment, it is easy to build a perimeter to protect sensitive data and workloads which are residing in the same cloud. With a multi-cloud approach, data is spread across multiple cloud locations, making it easier to access, traverse across different cloud locations and blur the lines. Therefore, strategies zero-trust become imperative to implement.
- A multi-cloud approach does not provide the same level of visibility as a single cloud environment. As underline infrastructure becomes more abstract, as more clouds are adopted, operation levels could reduce as does the level of visibility and control.
- Organisations need to dedicate significant time monitoring all their assets (e.g., cloud functions) and resources across their entire multi-cloud environment, especially as modern software architecture continues to evolve, and their life span becomes shorter.
- As every cloud operates differently, organisations need to have robust policy and access control protocols to protect their data and workloads. Organisations need to be able to uniformly apply these policies and access control across their entire cloud environment.
Is a multi-cloud strategy right for you?
Cloud computing adoption is well established in enterprises, SMEs, and start-ups. But how much cloud should a business adopt? How should workloads be deployed across public, private, and hybrid clouds? And if multiple cloud providers (public and/or private) are used, which ones should you choose, and how can they be managed to a business’s best advantage? These are all questions organisations need to consider when determining what cloud strategy they will deploy.
Why appoint Oreta
At Oreta, we believe that understanding shared responsibilities is the key to adopting a multi-cloud environment. When keeping up with the rapid changes in business requirements, the right strategy should be chosen from the start.
If you are looking at a cloud deployment, then reach out to us. Our focus is on meeting your requirements as an organisation. We are here to partner with you and make your business an ongoing success.
by badminton | Feb 11, 2021 | Cloud
Is your organisation, like many others, assessing the benefits of containers, but are struggling to go beyond establishing a Proof of Concept (PoC) due to the platform you are on?
Serverless computing, containers, and similar products such as Google Kubernetes, are influencing significant changes to the way organisations function. As the applications run quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another, organisations are investing in its potential to make them more agile and faster to market. They are experiencing an increase in visibility and portability towards application performance.
However, other organisations struggle to move beyond their PoCs to deployment due to their skillset and the cloud platform they are using.
Public cloud platforms, such as Google Cloud, have recognised this setback and are leading the way to make the underlying platforms easier to deploy and manage. However, these are only available to organisations that have migrated to the public cloud.
For organisations that use the private cloud, there is no easy solution. Several have considered building their own container stack. However, complications exist. Organisations must have a unique set of skills and know-how to scale, secure and manage it properly.
The Solution – Hybrid Cloud
Many organisations that have experienced the added frustration of deploying containers from a private cloud platform are now transitioning to a hybrid environment – a solution that combines a private cloud with one or more public cloud services. Organisations that have transitioned to a hybrid platform can now manage their workloads from one location and benefit from the best of both worlds.
Organisations are experiencing greater flexibility, scalability, and control over their data. They can store sensitive data in the private cloud, while at the same time access computational resources of a managed public cloud. As a hybrid cloud only requires one plane of management, it is different and more straightforward than a multi-cloud strategy where organisations manage each cloud platform separately.
Other benefits of Hybrid Cloud
Organisations can also benefit from:
- Cost savings by extending their private resources to a public cloud only when necessary. Resources do not have to sit idle until they are needed.
- Deploying a private network on-site to handle internal needs which then extends to the public cloud when computational resources exceed local availability.
- Improvement in computing and storage power, whereby organisations are using less physical space which on-site servers often require.
Deploying Hybrid Cloud
The hybrid model provides the business with multiple options so that stakeholders can pick an environment that best suits their needs. Some examples include:
- Load-balancing between on-prem and public cloud depending on where the access is coming from.
- Develop in the public cloud to leverage cheaper resources and deploy production on-prem for compliance.
- Create a seamless integration into legacy environments as you go through a digital transformation.
Is Hybrid Cloud right for you?
Hybrid cloud is an effective way to align IT priorities with business needs.
When comparing which cloud platform to go with, organisations should not underestimate the flexibility, scalability, and responsiveness of a hybrid cloud. How much flexibility organisations need is dependent on its business goals, what compliance measures are in place, and how much is the business expected to evolve in the future.
Hybrid cloud is highly valuable for organisations with fluctuating workloads, large amounts of data that need processing regularly, and have large mixes of IT services and applications.
It can also be very beneficial for organisations that experience seasonal fluctuations. Organisations can identify when they require additional resources and utilise them at appropriate times, which in turn helps organisations optimise their costs.
Start your journey to hybrid cloud with Oreta.
Are you keen to shift to a hybrid cloud platform, improving the visibility and flexibility of your applications and workloads, but not quite sure how? Let us understand your business needs and pain points and tailor a solution that meets your business goals. We can work with you on all aspects of the transformation lifecycle from Architecture to Migration / Transformation or components of it.
by badminton | Jan 15, 2021 | News
Telstra recently held its annual Telstra Partner Awards, virtually. Oreta was proud to be announced as a finalist in two main categories, Customer Excellence in Innovation and Cloud Partner of the Year 2020.
The awards play a significant role in acknowledging the strength of Telstra’s partners and showcasing excellence in customer service, innovation, and expertise within the ecosystem, across Australia. The calibre of finalists and winners in 2020 was of the most elite in the telecommunications and IT industry.
Oreta has been working consistently with Telstra for more than 5 years and is considered one of Telstra’s partners of choice for our cloud and networking capabilities. Oreta brings to the table a unique blend of technical and management processes combining the knowledge of Telstra systems, products, and an in-depth understanding of their processes.
“Becoming finalists in these two categories is a testament to the confidence and support of our customers, partners, and the consistently hard work our team puts in throughout the year”, Oreta’s MD Sachin Verma said.
As Telstra’s Enterprise Channel Partner Sales Executive, Nevash Pillay’ articulated during the event, that 2020 has been “a challenging and unpredictable year”, which makes Oreta’s achievement even more meaningful.
We are very proud of what we have achieved this year, given the unique set of circumstances our industry and economy have encountered during the pandemic.
Every year Oreta looks forward to the Telstra Enterprise Partner awards, however, this year’s event brought a new meaning to the word ‘togetherness’ and the importance of supporting each other within the partnership ecosystem.
We look forward to another year working in partnership with Telstra.
We would like to extend our congratulations to all this year’s winners and other finalists.
The awards play a significant role in acknowledging the strength of Telstra’s partners and showcasing excellence in customer service, innovation, and expertise within the ecosystem, across Australia. The calibre of finalists and winners in 2020 was of the most elite in the telecommunications and IT industry.
Oreta has been working consistently with Telstra for more than 5 years and is considered one of Telstra’s partners of choice for our cloud and networking capabilities. Oreta brings to the table a unique blend of technical and management processes combining the knowledge of Telstra systems, products, and an in-depth understanding of their processes.
“Becoming finalists in these two categories is a testament to the confidence and support of our customers, partners, and the consistently hard work our team puts in throughout the year”, Oreta’s MD Sachin Verma said.
As Telstra’s Enterprise Channel Partner Sales Executive, Nevash Pillay’ articulated during the event, that 2020 has been “a challenging and unpredictable year”, which makes Oreta’s achievement even more meaningful.
We are very proud of what we have achieved this year, given the unique set of circumstances our industry and economy have encountered during the pandemic.
Every year Oreta looks forward to the Telstra Enterprise Partner awards, however, this year’s event brought a new meaning to the word ‘togetherness’ and the importance of supporting each other within the partnership ecosystem.
We look forward to another year working in partnership with Telstra.
We would like to extend our congratulations to all this year’s winners and other finalists.
by badminton | Jan 15, 2021 | News
Oreta has been announced a finalist in the ARN Innovation Awards 2020 in three different categories. The three categories are homegrown, partner value (mid-market) and corporate citizen.
The awards play host to an extensive selection of leading innovators across Australia, ranging from start-ups, partners, distributors, and vendors. In its 14th consecutive year, the awards continue to recognise customers value and innovation and showcase excellence across the Australian channel. In 2020, more 180 companies submitted over 400 nominations with over 200 finalists across more than 130 organisations.
Given the calibre of other finalists listed on ARN’s website this was no easy feat for Oreta. Rajitha Rajasingham, Oreta’s Director of Operations, said “We are extremely proud of our team of Oreos who continue to keep our customers front and centre of what they do, balancing both professional and personal priorities as they work through the challenges that the pandemic presents”.
With the submissions for the partner value and homegrown awards, we made sure our capabilities and the importance of providing excellent service to all our customers shone through. They also demonstrated the importance of our ecosystem with our partners whose products underpin our solutions.
In our corporate citizen submission, we highlighted our continued efforts to address gender disparity and encouraging young girls to consider a career in the IT industry, and our commitment to the environment and reducing our carbon footprint.
For the past three consecutive years, Oreta has been the proud recipient of an ARN Innovation Award. We will continue to keep our fingers crossed that this will be our fourth. The winners will be announced in December. Until then we will keep our fingers crossed.
Stay tuned…
by badminton | Jan 15, 2021 | News
Australia loses female talent at every stage of the educational pipeline – from primary and secondary school to university and the workforce; this is particularly prevalent in the IT industry.
In 2019, only 28% of roles in the technology industry were filled by women. A concerning fact when it is proven, diverse teams lead to successful outcomes – for people, customers, community and business.
Oreta, a successful IT service provider, understands the need to shift gender percentages in the IT industry and is experiencing first-hand the need to achieve greater gender equality, with only 16% of its employees being women.
Saying that Oreta was co-founded by a female tech entrepreneur, Rajitha Rajasingham. As Director of Operations, Rajitha has worked in the industry for over 25 years and has seen the growing need to give young women the confidence to be trailblazers in the industry, to push through the barriers and pursue the same passion as their male counterparts.
Ms Rajasingham, the recipient of CRN’s inaugural ‘Women Leading Growth’ award, believes that “to gain more traction with young women, we need to encourage their curiosity in IT. We need to provide a means for them to build their skills and confidence and embrace their contributions to the industry.”
In 2020, Oreta plans to seize several opportunities to do its bit and help champion change and advocate gender parity within the IT industry.
To support International Women’s Day 2020, Oreta has provided headspace National Youth Mental Health Foundation with funding to support several young women who are engaged in the headspace Career Mentoring program to help increase interest in IT, further develop their careers in the IT space and gain additional education in areas of their choice.
Oreta will give young women who are participating in the headspace Career Mentoring program the opportunity to gain industry-specific knowledge and explore the many aspects and benefits of IT through their studies.
“We aim to inspire young women who are passionate about IT to have better conversations and make more informed choices about their career pathways. We want to empower them to believe that they can achieve what they set their heart on”, said Ms Rajasingham.
The headspace mentoring program aims to help young people overcome challenges and employment barriers and support them through their transition into the workforce, by connecting not-for-profits, industry and young job seekers.
“This opportunity from Oreta will be beneficial in giving young women a head start in their IT careers. Participants engaged in the headspace Career Mentoring program will benefit from this support as they look towards developing their knowledge and interest in the IT space”, said Carolyn Watts, National Manager Vocational Programs at headspace.
Oreta is excited about what can be achieved by supporting this program and encourages other like-minded organisations in the IT industry to consider getting on board to inspire more young women to consider a career in IT.
For more information about headspace career mentoring, visit the headspace website: https://headspace.org.au/work-and-study/digital-industry-mentor-service/
Additional Information
Oreta also operates Girls IgnITe, a 5-day work experience program where Year 10 and 11 girls will have the opportunity to learn about all the facets of an IT company.
