Are you a cloud architect, solution architect or enterprise architect interested in multi-cloud
architectures?
If so, this video is for you.
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs and I'm the Founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects.
And we're an organization that's dedicated towards building high performance cloud computing
careers.
Personally, I've been working in technology for over 25 years and I've been helping others
get their first tech job or promoted in tech for two decades.
And my favorite thing is when my students call me and say, "I just got cloud hired."
Today, we're going to talk about why multi-cloud is the only smart cloud architecture.
And we're going to talk about the business reasons for multi-cloud architectures.
We'll talk about the technology reasons for multi-cloud architectures as well.
And then why most organizations would be best with a hybrid cloud or a multi-cloud architecture.
We're going to begin with the tech.
Let's talk about the tech first.
A single cloud is a single point of failure.
I'm going to say this again, a single cloud is a single point of failure.
Now the cloud providers will tell you multiple availability zones, multiple regions, and
you're going to have five nines availability, two availability zones in two different regions,
but a single cloud is a single point of failure.
And while a single cloud may deliver availability under the right circumstances, a single cloud
architecture is so vulnerable to so many of the catastrophic failures that can occur.
And it's almost never a good idea to use a single cloud.
And we'll talk about the business direction of it, but let's talk about the tech.
In high availability architectures.
You have no single points of failure and you have redundancy everywhere.
Now, the most critical part of any cloud or any data center or anything is the network.
The network is the foundation for everything.
It is the plumbing.
It is also in most cases, the most complicated part.
When we build networks, we always use two different network providers.
For example, let's say I'm in Palm beach, Florida, and I want to connect to New York.
I might get a link from AT&T and I would get another network connection from Verizon.
Now I wouldn't use two links on AT&T, look AT&T is an incredible internet service provider,
and I love them and they are my internet service provider, one of them, but why wouldn't I
have two links on AT&T because if this link gets cut for example, the backup on AT&T would
work.
But if AT&T has a network problem, both links go down.
And if my network's just on AT&T I am down, so you would never build a network with a
single service provider, and you should never build a cloud with a single service provider.
The network is the primary reason you should never use a single cloud provider because
if they have a problem in their network, it'll take down the whole cloud or it could take
down the whole cloud.
Now let's talk about the next reason you should never assume a single cloud provider can do
it.
And all cloud architects, solution architects and enterprise architects as part of their
job should always think multicloud.
The cloud architect understands how the cloud works.
Basically speaking, you've got a network, routers and switches and cables and such.
And then you've got a bunch of servers, a bunch of storage and load balancers and all
these things.
Now that's the physical data center, the physical cloud.
Now what turns it into a real cloud, the installation of the control plane.
The cloud's got this master orchestration thing.
That's enabling servers to be coming up.
It's enabling the storage to be where it is.
It's the control plane.
It orchestrates it.
If the conductor you've got like, say the conductor, which is controlling the orchestra,
if that goes down, the conductor goes down, the orchestra doesn't play as well.
Now, if the orchestration of the cloud goes down, the whole cloud can go down.
Again, that single cloud becomes a single point of failure because it doesn't matter
how many availability zones and regions do you use.
The control plane goes down.
The cloud is dead.
If the cloud is dead, all of its customers are dead.
Now there's one more tech reason that a single cloud is so dangerous.
People for some reason, think the cloud is more secure than the data center.
Well, let's first start with the facts.
The cloud has every security vulnerability that the data center has.
Identical number between the cloud and the data center, but now in the cloud, if the
cloud gets hacked, you can get access to all the customers information.
And it's not rare.
We saw it recently with Azure, they were hacked.
And a lot of the people that were using one of their databases, their information came
out.
It's not that the cloud providers, aren't amazing.
They're amazing.
The point is these things happen.
Hackers are out there and who do you hack?
Do you hack a single data center?
Or do you hack the cloud?
If you hack the cloud, it's the highest value you target in the world because you get all
of their customers.
Because of that, with the cloud, you have to be concerned about all the normal security
things, but also what happens to the cloud, because if the cloud is hacked with a massive
DDoS attack and the cloud can't survive, it, all the cloud is down all over again.
We can lose the cloud to a network failure, A control plane failure or a hacking failure.
And imagine a hospital, for example, that has patients in the hospital that are dependent
upon the technology.
A patient has an emergency.
The doctor goes to the chart and can't find anything.
They don't know the patient's allergies, their blood type or whatever.
It's a disaster.
People will die.
Or if it's a bank that can basically make millions of dollars a minute or lose millions
of dollars a minute, if their systems are dumb, they can be catastrophic.
So we can't use a single cloud.
We can't use a single set network providers because there's just too many risks.
That's the technology reasons.
But do you think these outages are rare?
The cloud providers say it's safe to availability zones, get you four nines availability, two
availability zones, and two regions.
And guess what?
Five nines, five minutes and 15 seconds of downtime per year.
Let's examine the facts, on October 13th, 2021, Azure had a pretty massive outage and
it affected a tremendous number of customers.
And November 16th, Google had a pretty substantial outage and affected some major customers in
a lot of environments.
December 7th, 2021, AWS had an outage and affected multiple regions.
And on December 15th, 2021, AWS had another outage affecting multiple valley zones in
regions.
As you can see four major events inside of 60 days or so two months, four major events.
Realistically speaking, did any cloud provider do five nines this year?
No.
Did any cloud provider deliver four nines this year?
Time?
Not really.
Realistically think about that and look at this no cloud provider this year has been
able to do high availability and we expected it.
People like me from the network background, we've told everybody you must use a multi-cloud
architecture or a hybrid cloud architecture.
You must either have a data center and a cloud, a data center, and two clouds or three clouds,
but don't have one cloud provider.
In the military world we say, "One is none, two is one and three is greater than two.
And in the high availability world, it's the same thing.
Anytime you have anything that's a single point of failure.
A single cloud is a single point of failure.
Now let's talk about the business reason a single cloud provider is not a good idea.
When you have a single cloud provider, it gives you and puts you in a situation where
you are locked in.
Now, if you move all your infrastructure to the cloud, and especially if you use cloud
vendor proprietary services, where you had a rig code or configure application to get
them to the cloud, and the cloud provider says, "We want to raise your rates 20%."
You're stuck.
If the cloud provider decides they don't like your business for some reason and wants to
kick you out, you're in trouble.
But the point is when you're on a single cloud provider, you have no bargaining power whatsoever.
Cloud provider wants to raise your rates.
You're stuck, you can do it.
And the service provider, the cloud provider knows if you're using serverless, it can cost
you thousands or millions or tens of millions of dollars to leave.
And that's why all these serverless things are so cool and proprietary things are so
cool.
You're in, you're trapped forever.
Now they often do provide some transformation and good services.
The organization has to value in the architecture.
Is it better to be trapped?
And the risk of not being able to leave and save a little money, or is it better to have
options?
And that's going to be different for every business, but the cloud providers know if
you're on a single cloud, you're in trouble.
Now let's talk about being on multi-cloud.
Now I'm on multiple cloud providers.
My one cloud provider wants to raise my rates.
I can say to the provider, "Bye."
Now I might not really want to do that, but I can say, "Bye."
Now, here's the thing.
I want you to truly understand the impact of losing a customer to a major cloud provider.
If it's a small customer like me and I want to leave my cloud provider, they don't care,
but let's assume I'm a big bank, global retailer, and I'm on two clouds.
And now I decide to pull out of one cloud because they are raising my rates.
You know what's going to happen.
The new cloud provider's going to issue a press release.
Big business, went to ABC cloud.
Now and they left ABC cloud to go to DEF cloud.
That's where it really comes.
Now.
I have spoken to tremendous numbers of technology providers, and they have told me that when
a critical customer leaves them and issues a press release to go to another customer,
it can cost tens to hundreds of millions, to billions of dollars per quarter in lost
business.
When you're on multiple clouds and your cloud provider plays games with you, tries to raise
your rates.
What have you, you can say, "I'm thinking of going to that other cloud provider would
be a nice press release."
And that cloud provider will really come down and negotiate with you because the value of
having you as a customer and getting the press release that you are a customer may in some
cases far more worth it to the cloud provider than the cost of your business in the first
place.
But if you're on a single cloud, you've got no bargaining power because you're trapped
and they know you're trapped.
From a business perspective, give yourself options.
If one of the cloud providers were to go bankrupt, which they won't, but let's assume they would.
You're still in another cloud provider, so it's giving your business continuity planning.
If the cloud provider doesn't like your business and wants to kick you out, it's happened before.
Don't worry.
You're still on another cloud provider.
Always have options, a single cloud as a single point of failure.
Now let's look cloud architects, solution architects and enterprise architects.
We'd never design a network with a single point of failure.
We shouldn't design a cloud architecture with a single point of failure by using multi-cloud
architectures.
Realistically speaking, we have no single points of failure.
We have protection from better vendor lock in.
We have better bargaining power.
We should all be multi-cloud architects, not just solution architects, cloud architects,
or enterprise architects, because multi-cloud architecture is the only cloud architecture
that's high availability and in the best interest of our customers.
This is Michael Gibbs.
I'm the founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects.
It's an honor to speak to you today.
And I look forward to seeing you in another video, take care.
It was so nice having you join us for this video today.
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Thank you so much.
This is Michael Gibbs from the Go Cloud Architects.