With cloud providers offering a wide range of applications, services, and pricing models, buyers can find it difficult to choose which one to work with. Not surprisingly, many are opting not to place all their eggs in a single cloud.

Multi cloud environments have become commonplace within the Australian public cloud market, with Forrester’s Infrastructure Cloud Survey 2022 finding 95 percent of enterprise cloud decision-makers used multiple public cloud vendors, primarily to mitigate risk.

One company that has embraced this model wholeheartedly is NAB, where chief technology officer Steve Day says the bank has developed a ‘true multi cloud’ strategy.

“One of the restrictions the board has placed on tech at NAB is that we can’t pin the success of NAB on any supplier,” Day said.

“Once you go all in with a vendor, regardless of what technology it is, you are tying yourself to that vendor for a long time. Vendor entanglement has been a problem for tech long before cloud.”

Day says 77 percent of NAB’s application estate now resides in a public cloud, and the bank is on track to have migrated 83 percent by the end of the 2024 financial year. The goal is to eventually migrate 85 percent, leaving only the bank’s mainframe applications outside the cloud.

Underpinning NAB’s multi cloud model is another prominent cloud migration trend – the containerisation of cloud workloads using the open-source Kubernetes management platform.

According to Markets N Research, the total Kubernetes market is projected to grow from US$1.8 billion in 2022 to US$7.8 billion by 2030.

“When we are deploying those workloads, we are in a situation now where the developers aren’t really conscious of which cloud that this workload will end up in,” Day said.

This means Day and his team can shift workloads to whatever location makes the most sense based on prevailing criteria – including cost. This, combined with the sheer scale of NAB’s cloud estate, gives the bank significant leverage when negotiating with cloud providers.

However, this financial benefit has not come without a significant commitment to skills training, with 4500 NAB staff now upskilled in cloud technology. This training has also been extended to the bank’s finance teams, in the form of training in cloud economics. Day believes this has been vital for ensuring that NAB can avoid the spiralling costs that have accompanied some cloud implementations.

“When you remove the friction on the tech side, the consumption on the business side can get out of hand if you let it,” Day said.

“So we are trying to align the decision making on using the cloud resources right back into the businesses at the finance level with each of the providers.

“I have a whole team which we call our Cloud Financial Operations Team whose sole job in life is to find the efficiencies in cloud and to exploit them. We have saved 123 percent of our spend this year.”

At NAB, Day says this work is supported by the technology teams who have automated production workflows including shutdown procedures when services are not in use.

“You have got to stay on top of your cloud economics, and that is not just the tech guys, because tech guys aren’t good at managing costs,” Day said.

While NAB’s disciplined approach to multi cloud is also delivering benefits of resilience, security, and agility, Day notes that it is not without drawbacks – including the need to avoid using cloud services which are native to only one provider.

“One of the disadvantages of having a true multi cloud solution is you are down to lowest common denominator,” Day said.

“You can’t use those advanced services and remain a true multi cloud environment. So in many cases, with some of those higher layer services, we have had to develop ourselves, and come up with solutions that allow us to have common elements between the two cloud providers.”

Another drawback of the multi cloud model is the inherent complexity that comes with each new supplier. According to former REA Group chief technology officer Tom Varsavsky, commoditisation means it is getting harder to differentiate between suppliers, but the benefits of moving workloads between different clouds based on cost alone can quickly disappear.

“At REA I was very deliberate to have a single cloud strategy. because we couldn’t carry the complexity of two clouds, and any cost arbitrage benefit would erode with other overheads that you are biting off,” Varsavsky said.

“So tread carefully if you are going multi cloud, and be purposeful about it.”

Despite these concerns, other IT execs have been enthusiastic about the benefits of multi cloud scenarios. Since fully migrating off its on-premises infrastructure the Australian Football League has built a multi cloud environment that is enabling chief technology, digital and data officer Rob Pickering and his team to enjoy the best of what different providers have to offer.

“One thing I am a big believer in is ‘the right workload for the right cloud’,” Pickering said.

“Some clouds are better at things than others, so we just choose the right workload for the right cloud.”

Pickering says the strategy is also supported by many vendors making their tools available across multiple cloud services, which has been critical in building the AFL’s security

“Cyber security is the number one issue for people like me, and for boards, and when you are in PaaS or SaaS or IaaS, the ability to take best of breed security tools and deploy them across your own environment is a real advantage, versus on premises legacy hardware and software,” Pickering said.

“I can deploy best of breed software tool sets across the entirety of the estate really quickly to make sure we’ve got those edges secured.”