The challenge of multicloud complexity continues to grow. Managing resources through varied interfaces, tracking costs, and securing configurations are only part of an expanding problem set. IT leaders deeply immersed in network and cloud architectures find that the major task ahead is to more efficiently connect all of the multicloud’s moving parts.

This puts new focus on the role of multicloud networking optimization in achieving top-class performance, visibility, and cost savings across global cloud deployments, according to Hon Kit Lam, Vice President of Hybrid Connectivity Services at Tata Communications. Gaining overall control of these mission-critical processes becomes a stark necessity, he told SDxCentral Studios.

“More than 70 to 80% of our enterprise customers have embraced multicloud already. They have, for example, more than two hybrid clouds that connect private and public clouds together,” Lam said.

New use cases are emerging too, he continued. It’s more than just site-to-cloud, data center-to-cloud, and cloud-to-cloud. The connective cloud lattice work is expanding to users-to-SaaS and Cloud-to-SaaS. IoT edge device-to-cloud connections, too, are gaining momentum among users of Tata Communications portfolio of networked multicloud solutions.

“Use cases are constantly expanding. It just seems to be more complicated all the time,” Lam said, noting the rise in the number of connections gains momentum as lines of business within the organization pursue more transformative use cases.

Clearly, multicloud environments are fast-moving targets – new collections of underlying technologies and end-use business applications spawn overnight, with AI just being the latest in a line of initiatives with which IT shops must contend. It is an often-underappreciated fact that cloud networks can quickly become complex and costly. If poorly configured, they badly impact response time, and new data hungry applications add to the burden.

A journey into cloud complexity may have begun with the simplest virtual private cloud and an Internet Gateway. According to Lam, legacy nodes like these may still drain resources. Customers may turn to the newest virtualized network function (VNF) and border gateway protocol implementations. They may look to establish specified cloud network hubs within the overall network architecture to provide secure starting points for deploying resources. Such resources include databases, virtual machines, and storage, all of which continue to take on new technical characteristics, he indicated.

The journey is continuing. As the multicloud evolves organically, teams work hard to deploy more virtual private clouds (VPCs) and subnets, network address translation (NAT) gateways, internet gateways (IGW) and transit gateways or a global WAN. It’s a steady parade of new connections and endpoints.

The ins and outs of egress

Interest in extending today’s multicloud connections must first focus on cost, Lam said. This is a discussion that must be had, as cloud, once poised as the low-cost alternative to on-premises data centers, has created some operational line items that can make for surprising billings -- especially when data must be moved from the original host cloud.

Most organizations have at least one tale to tell of multi-thousand-dollar costs due to an outbound data pipeline that was inadvertently left “on,” or an application that was too expensive to bring in-house solely due to a cloud provider’s data policies. A CFO contacting a CEO about the overuse of multicloud traffic pipelines is not unheard of.

As Lam said, “a lot of times different departments rush into the cloud, and the cost of egress from that cloud is very different from what they expect.”

In fact, data egress costs (seemingly random charges from cloud providers for moving or transferring) have grown more burdensome over time. Yet the movement of computational workloads to the most efficient locations will be a hallmark of next-gen multicloud computing.

“When planning, CIOs and CTOs need first to understand the cost of multicloud as it relates to complexity. They need to know what they are spending on multicloud today, and then achieve an understanding of the benefits that multicloud offers,” he said.

All this indicates that implementers must use discussions of egress cost scenarios to cast light on the broader issue of managing complexity, optimizing performance, and cutting the total cost of ownership. Simplifying operations and reducing complexity is the path to reducing total cost of ownership, Lam said, and network connections are the primary optimization target.

The conversations are happening now, especially as generic applications are complemented by AI Cloud applications that can overfill inadequately provisioned data pipes, both in training and in inferencing modes, according to Lam.

Options define multicloud networking capabilities

Advances in multicloud networking are at the heart of the next cloud era. These are central efforts to control cost in cloud connectivity, while still achieving transformative business breakthroughs.

Tata Communications’ understanding of this is informed by their pivotal position in connectivity and communications. As Lam highlights, 30 percent or more of the world’s internet routes are connected to Tata Communications Global Tier-1 IP network infrastructure as customers.

Tata Communications meets users’ needs with a wide collection of platform tooling solutions and services. These help IT leaders to understand how applications will run on the multicloud. This takes the form of IZO Multi Cloud Connect. Also available are managed solutions able to span the entire multicloud and hybrid cloud surface.

IZO Multi Cloud Connect’s single-pane-of-glass orchestration tool helps manage challenging aspects of private and public cloud environments. It acts as a single interface for managing connections across various clouds, and it enables automated provisioning, greatly simplifying deployment.

Real-time reports pinpoint traffic activity between different locations to make sure the ops team knows where key traffic generation is coming from. In fact, business teams — including our friend, the cost-conscious CFO — can benefit from such reports. Just as importantly, smooth traffic helps ensure the end-user application experience is optimal – that latency is acceptable and apps work despite many hops across the World Wide Web.

The latest news on egress is this: Platforms like IZO Multi Cloud Connect can provide valuable insights during the crucial planning phase that precedes ingress and egress of cloud data. Taken together, the capabilities of Tata Communications IZO Multi Cloud Connect have egress cost optimizations that even reach 30 percent cost reductions versus existing set-ups.

It is a big job to effectively connect tomorrow’s canvas of clouds -- public clouds, hybrids, SaaS, data centers, and on-premises. But a clear path is in view. Successful multicloud connections are the way.

Examples show the profound benefits of simplified multi-cloud operations: A contract business process outsourcing firm’s customer contact center faced issues with dropped calls and poor voice quality for foreign clients. Delays in data transfer between cloud services disrupted critical operations such as call routing, live chat, and real-time agent data access. Using IZO Multi Cloud Connect, the firm was able to move from the internet to a Global VPN and private MPLS/VPN platform. Five globally dispersed agent locations were connected, and more than 20% in cost savings were reported, with 100% availability and uninterrupted access for the agents to access the platform. Other benefits included superior voice quality due to better infrastructure and optimized routing algorithms that prioritized voice traffic.

Using IZO Multi Cloud Connect, a leading Indian airline was able to seamlessly migrate IT infrastructure to public cloud platforms like Azure and AWS while gaining high-performance and secure connections to a critical passenger service management platform. The system processes over two million transactions daily with 100% availability.

In recent years, high-volume trading platforms have employed IZO Multi Cloud Connect to link multiple clouds. This enables full mesh cloud-to-cloud and hybrid cloud connections to cloud providers for seamless communication and redundancy. Operators gain a centralized management platform for multi-cloud connectivity with tracking capabilities across clouds for simplified administration and troubleshooting. Performance is improved by at least 30% compared to internet-based solutions. That is crucial, of course, in the high-volume transaction market.

To learn more about IZO Multi Cloud Connect, click here or watch the demo.