You might have heard that multicloud is the future of IT. It would be more accurate to say it’s the present of IT. More than 80 percent of enterprises already have a multicloud strategy.

But what is multicloud, exactly? As the name suggests, multicloud is an IT approach in which an organization uses multiple cloud services from more than one provider.

Hybrid cloud versus multicloud

Hybrid cloud and multicloud might sound like the same thing, but there is one crucial difference.

With hybrid cloud, an organization uses a combination of public cloud, private cloud and on-premises services to achieve its goals. With multicloud, a team uses multiple cloud services from more than one provider.

These approaches coexist nicely. For example, a team that uses a private cloud solution, an on-premises server and three different public cloud solutions would have an IT strategy that is both multicloud and hybrid cloud.

Why containers are so important for multicloud

One of the challenges of a multicloud approach is that different cloud solutions run in different software environments. Organizations want to build applications that can easily move across a wide range of these environments without creating integration difficulties.

Containers are the ideal answer because they isolate software from the underlying environment. This empowers developers to build applications that will deploy essentially anywhere.

Most businesses are turning primarily to open source solutions to manage and deploy these containerized applications. In particular, Kubernetes has emerged as the dominant platform for container orchestration.

Three reasons you might need multicloud management

While open source will get you a long way, there are still unresolved issues at the enterprise level. Here are three examples:

• Visibility. With so many clusters running on so many environments, organizations aren’t getting enough visibility into their containerized applications. What exactly is running where? It’s difficult to know.

• Security and governance. Managing governance with Kubernetes clusters can be a challenge. Businesses are looking for a way to set consistent security policies across all environments. There is the additional challenge of managing configurations and placing workloads appropriately based on compliance or capability. This isn’t something open source currently addresses.

• Consistent application management. While Kubernetes has some great automation functions, businesses still lack crucial capabilities, such as backing up applications, having options for managing disaster recovery or easily moving workloads across environments.

Learn how to solve these challenges by visiting the IBM Multicloud Manager website.

Read more about how IBM supports your choice of cloud across providers, including IBM Cloud, AWS, Azure or GCP.