The world has gone cloud. Moving onto a cloud infrastructure reduces the need for costly IT resources, both human and hardware. Large cloud providers have also worked hard to optimize their data centers to have a much lower carbon footprint per watt-hour than smaller companies could ever hope to achieve.
But vendor lock-in is a problem. With giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google competing for the same customers, the vendor lock-in problem grows ever more complicated.
Various solutions have been created to circumvent this issue, allowing companies to move resources to a cloud solution without falling into the trap of vendor lock-in. These solutions are:
- Cloud containers
- Virtualization
- On-premise clouds
Let’s look at each one, their pros, cons, and differences, so you can make an informed choice about which might be the best one for you.
Cloud Containers
A cloud container is analogous to a lightweight virtual machine. It holds an application and all of its dependencies.
These containers are isolated from the host system, preventing the dreaded vendor lock-in situation. Cloud containers can run on Amazon AWS just as well as on Azure and many other platforms.
They are also more secure because they are self-contained. Developers can code for the container and maintain a consistent environment across cloud platforms.
Containers also scale well and are especially well-suited for a microservice architecture.
Virtualization
Unlike cloud containers, virtualization refers to virtualizing an entire computing resource. This could be a server or a storage device.
Virtualization lets you run multiple OSes on a single server and even multiple instances of a single OS.
Companies would typically use a virtualization solution for longer-term setups than cloud containers. Virtualization might be a better option if the apps you are running require direct access to the OS. Althought his technology has been around for a long time, there are modern ways to better virtualize.
On-premise cloud
Building a full-scale on-premise cloud might be the option to go for much larger companies or companies with extremely strict data protection requirements. This gives you complete control over the entire data center but requires far more resources to set up, manage, and maintain.
The obvious benefit is that you are free from any sort of vendor lock-in. Your on-premise cloud can likewise make use of cloud containers and virtualization so that, if you did want to shift to a cloud provider, you could do so relatively easily.
It is important that this solution has integration with cloud vendors. It must be designed very carefully as it gets very complex at scale.
We can help you with your cloud setup
CoAction is a technology brokerage that can provide you with all the expertise and resources required to set up your desired cloud infrastructure, regardless of where your workload should live. Instead of dealing with a dozen different providers to ensure your chosen setup runs smoothly, you only deal with one — us.
Even if you use an on-premise solution, we can still provide the continuous workforce necessary to keep such a solution running smoothly.
Contact us to learn more about how we can help you set up your chosen cloud infrastructure.
