The single-vendor approach is one many businesses will take, as it makes the management of contracts and the execution of activities much easier. When it comes to your cloud strategy, however, relying on a single vendor to meet all of your needs may not be the best strategy.
Businesses that take a single-vendor approach could miss out on key flexibility and find themselves in vendor lockdown. Consider the following potential downfalls before you wrap up all activities into one provider:
Cost: Most companies want the opportunity to negotiate cost when it comes to services they need to function. When one provider is in the mix, it may seem like a great strategy for better leverage. The problem is that the best features are not generally found with one provider at the best cost.
Downtime: A single cloud provider that can’t maintain promised uptime creates problems for you and your business. With a multi-cloud strategy, you don’t have to worry about prolonged downtime as redundant data is backed up across multiple cloud providers. With multiple players involved, you can avoid data loss and downtime.
Single vendor lock-in: While the initial lock-in arrangement may work well, it can be cumbersome and risky to migrate all of your data from one cloud provider to another if the former fails to completely meet your requirements. When your cloud strategy involves multiple providers, you have more options.
Lack of flexibility: Any company that wants to grow must be able to rely on flexible solutions. When flexibility is made a priority, you have the ability to scale, improve performance in key areas, and reduce overall costs.
Lack of choice: When you tie in with just one vendor, the choices available to help you meet your cloud strategy goals are limited to what that provider can offer. When you can mix and match the best offerings of varied providers, you can better fit your operational design to your organizational goals.
Performance disappointments: A single vendor limits the ability to optimize performance. When you can distribute data across multiple providers, unexpected cloud downtime doesn’t have to be an issue. The distribution of the workload leverages the best features of your cloud providers and improves overall performance.
If you’re ready to investigate how you can avoid these pitfalls and put a better, more distributed cloud strategy in place, contact Access Tech. Our experts are ready to help you assess your needs and put the best solution in place so you can improve performance, mitigate risk, and enjoy greater flexibility.
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