Multicloud and the Paradox of Choice

Multicloud means, simultaneously using multiple cloud computing services either of same model (read cloud computing service models) or different model – IaaS with SaaS or IaaS with PaaS. In professional or an enterprise setup, it is quite common to concurrently use separate cloud providers for infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) service or use multiple infrastructure (IaaS) providers like that from Amazon, HP Cloud together.

Practical Usage Examples of Multicloud

So, we can clearly get at three combinations – IaaS+PaaS, IaaS+SaaS and IaaS+IaaS. IaaS+IaaS can be used for load balancing, caching, geographical distribution of content across various data centers, part of fail safe plan as a way to have a way to run the server in case of disaster or backup. In the latter case, the usage of different infrastructure providers is for different workloads – deploying a single workload load balanced across multiple providers is called active-active, deploy a single workload on one provider with a backup on another is called active-passive.

However, the commonest usage still is IaaS+SaaS – just for example; the email services are usually SaaS. Not many IaaS providers has hosted email service except Rackspace. This becomes an opt out way of using Multicloud.

PaaS is an option to host some demo, repository etc. Web Shell is an example from our developments.

Multicloud and the Paradox of Choice

Paradox of Choice derived from the Title of a book by (psychologist not the person who is SEO Expert with the same name) Barry Schwartz. Freedom of choice is critical to our well being. That is the crux of Open Source model of business. That is the power of cloud computing softwares like OpenStack.

The same effect can take place when two very close type of pricing models are offered in front of us. It is actually difficult to compare IBM/Softlayer vs HP Cloud vs Rackspace for Infrastructure managed cases. End cost is quite closer. If one has desired feature named A, it does to have the desired feature B. While second one can have only the feature B. The features are not exactly too much important, but add some easiness of usage – like something which can be done via web GUI instead of SSH, in case of IaaS.