The Evolving Landscape of Cloud Computing
The digital landscape today is in a constant state of flux, and organizations must adapt their IT strategies to keep up with the rapid advancements in cloud computing. Gone are the days when IT leaders were determined to move everything to the public cloud, only to realize that some resources perform better and are cheaper to run on-premises. This has led to the rise of the hybrid cloud environment, where organizations leverage a mix of public cloud and private data centers to drive efficiency, innovation, and scalability.
However, this shift to hybrid and multi-cloud architectures has introduced a new set of challenges for network and cloud engineers. Connectivity, security, performance monitoring, cost management, and data sovereignty are just a few of the complexities that IT teams must navigate in these modern environments. Comprehensive visibility across all cloud platforms and on-premises infrastructure has become crucial for proactive management and rapid troubleshooting.
Connectivity and Security Challenges in Hybrid Cloud
One of the primary challenges in hybrid cloud environments is the complexity of connectivity. Each cloud service provider (CSP) has its own set of APIs, networking constructs, capabilities, and management tools, and engineers must somehow manage these disparate systems collectively. Additionally, the potential for inconsistent security policies across multiple cloud platforms poses a significant risk, especially in today’s cybersecurity landscape.
Ensuring consistent security policies across all platforms is critical, as different environments may have varying security controls and compliance requirements. Setting up effective and accurate security policies can be a daunting task, and good governance in a public cloud environment is even harder due to the simultaneous deployment of resources by different teams. Navigating these security challenges is further complicated when trying to align public cloud with on-premises resources.
Performance Monitoring and Cost Management
Another key challenge in hybrid and multi-cloud environments is performance monitoring. As organizations leverage resources on-premises, in the cloud, and from SaaS providers to deliver applications to end-users, understanding and troubleshooting performance issues becomes increasingly complex. Different CSPs offer varying levels of network performance, reliability, and visibility, making it difficult for engineers to monitor all these factors and ensure a great user experience.
Visibility is not just about performance; it also extends to the management of costs in multi-cloud environments. Without proper visibility, managing costs can quickly become a disaster, as engineers need to understand resource utilization and cost-efficiency across all platforms. Surprise cloud bills are a common problem for budget-conscious IT teams, and alerting them of significant traffic changes can provide decision-makers with the necessary information before the bill arrives.
Data Sovereignty and Compliance
Even though cloud resources are housed in someone else’s data center, often across the globe, data sovereignty and compliance remain top priorities. Adhering to legal and regulatory requirements across geographic and digital boundaries can be a complex challenge, especially when data resides across multiple clouds and regions.
Comprehensive visibility into network operations across all environments is critical to address these challenges. Vendors like Kentik provide a unified network analytics and visibility platform designed to work across modern hybrid and multi-cloud architectures, offering a vendor-agnostic solution to stay on top of change regardless of the architecture, vendor, or the latest initiative from the CIO’s office.
Kentik’s Approach to Hybrid Cloud Visibility
Kentik’s platform excels in providing the comprehensive visibility needed to navigate the complexities of hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The platform ingests data from a wide variety of sources, including cloud service providers, on-premises infrastructure, SaaS providers, and internet service providers, to deliver a unified view of network performance across all cloud regions, providers, containers, and environments.
By consolidating this data into a single unified data repository, Kentik can analyze it in context, providing deep insights that are crucial for proactive management and rapid troubleshooting. The platform incorporates information from routing tables, DNS, security tags, and application-layer data to help engineers understand the data as it relates to application performance, allowing them to clearly see, troubleshoot, and understand application traffic from end to end.
Practical Examples of Kentik’s Hybrid Cloud Visibility
Consider a scenario where a Kubernetes environment in Google Cloud experiences high latency between two container pods, which in turn increases the delay in response to the request made by a web front-end service running in AWS. This user experience degradation, caused by a problem in one cloud affecting the performance of resources in another cloud, is the kind of challenge that Kentik’s platform can help navigate.
By providing visibility into the service provider networks, Kentik bridges the gap between on-premises infrastructure and cloud resources, enabling engineers to track the performance of ISP and cloud provider links, which are critical for end-to-end service delivery. This includes analyzing routing tables, BGP information, and the paths over the internet connecting the resources, allowing engineers to identify where a problem occurs with network performance between end-users and the public cloud resources they’re trying to consume.
The Future of Hybrid Cloud Adoption
Today, most organizations are either hybrid, multi-cloud, or a combination of both. As architectures and strategies for consuming new technologies continue to evolve, the complexity of network and cloud visibility has increased, but the need for it has become more critical than ever.
Kentik is the modern, vendor-agnostic solution that enables IT professionals to stay on top of change, regardless of the architecture, vendor, or the latest initiative from the CIO’s office. By providing comprehensive visibility across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, Kentik empowers engineers to proactively manage, troubleshoot, and optimize their network and cloud infrastructure, ensuring that their organizations can thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
Conclusion
The rise of hybrid and multi-cloud environments has introduced a new set of challenges for IT teams, but Kentik’s comprehensive visibility platform offers a solution to navigate these complexities. By ingesting data from a wide range of sources and consolidating it into a unified data repository, Kentik provides deep, contextual insights that are essential for proactive management and rapid troubleshooting.
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, organizations must embrace the flexibility and agility offered by hybrid cloud architectures to drive innovation and remain competitive. With the right tools and strategies in place, IT professionals can confidently navigate the complexities of hybrid cloud environments and unlock the full potential of their cloud-based resources.
