A Contributed Article by Fredrik Schmidt of Accelerite

The snow is melting away and people are taking to the streets to enjoy the sun, which did little shining during the winter months. It's times like these that get everyone excited for the summer, with beach trips, pool hangouts, and endless outdoor activities in the near future.

I'm sure you're already daydreaming about taking that road trip down to the shore - hair blowing in the wind as you cruise in your red convertible down a winding oceanside highway. But unfortunately, that daydream can only be realized if you sell that all-wheel drive winter machine, or if you've leased your current car (and can switch to something more summer-appropriate).

A similar analogy can be made about today's disaster recovery cloud landscape. You may need a certain provider for time-specific needs, but once hurricane season has passed and your mission-critical data is secured, you may look to the cloud with different requirements.

Once you're locked into a long-term disaster recovery arrangement with one cloud provider, it becomes difficult to jump around to a new cloud, which may offer benefits not found in your current provider. No one cloud can offer the range of functionality needed to secure business-critical data and applications across an entire enterprise, just like a car ranges in size with different functionalities, room for storage and passengers, cost, and resale value.

Clouds, too, can be "leased" - today's application and data replication solutions now allow for migration across multiple clouds. You may use one cloud for a portion of time, and switch to another provider for new business needs, or you may be leasing two at the same time, both with different functions in your business model. Here are some of the benefits of leasing clouds:

Lease your dream car

You may not have the funds to own a Tesla Model S, but that doesn't restrict you from ever driving one. Leasers often get larger, more luxurious, better-equipped cars, as they won't be paying the full price for use during a limited period of time.

If you've steered clear of signing one disaster recovery cloud contract, you can ensure your business is using the best cloud providers available, as price will be less of a pressing issue. You may use provider X for their expert application recovery ability, and provider Y to backup mission-critical data. Don't let long-term arrangements and technology inhibit your business' cloud computing strategy.

Planning your sunny road trip  

You may live in an area with brutal winters that requires all-wheel drive capabilities. During these months, you drive something that can handle the snowy roads and has room for the whole family and their ski gear. But you're looking ahead to the summer, and would really enjoy the ability to put the top down and catch some rays during your summer road trip.

Just like you can lease a car for an extended timeframe, you can now work with different cloud providers during different times of the year, or lease two at once. One cloud solution doesn't offer every function required to run an enterprise in the cloud. Enterprises need to mix and match a range of public and private offerings to better suit their specific needs.

Leased cars rarely require maintenance

Leased cars are usually the most up-to-date models that are always under warranty and rarely require routine maintenance. You can drive till your heart's content, and have little worry of mechanical failure during your lease timeframe. If you do experience troubles, dealerships are easy to work with as they are fighting for your loyalty for lease number two.

With the proper workload management solution, you can ensure you're working with the best solution cloud providers are offering. If a new version comes out, migrating is as simple as stepping out of one car and into the next. And if you're leasing two clouds at once, cloud downtime is of little concern as your data can be accessed from your secondary provider.

Customer service for leased vehicles

Buying a car from a dealership is a very exciting process - but daunting. The salesman is shoveling information at a fast pace, and your excitement to take your new car out on the open road means some information goes over your head. The dealership claims to be there for you in times of need, but their pitch is designed to ensure loyalty - they're hired to sell cars, and you've just signed on the dotted line.

Cloud providers work in a similar way. It's all courting and niceties until you've pulled the trigger and start using their disaster recovery services. Now you're locked into the deal, and customer service becomes a thing of the past. If you've avoided a singular contract, cloud providers are constantly trying to gain your loyalty, and your service stays top of mind. If you're working with two or more clouds, determine which provider you'll be dropping based on how you've worked together during your relationship.

Turning in the keys

You've been counting down the days until your extravagant beach vacation. You pull up to the dealership, drop off the keys to your winter workhorse, and step into the red beauty you've been dreaming about during the freezing winter months. If you're leasing from the same dealership, this process is simple, as they want your business when snow starts to fall and your convertible contract is up.

Leaving a cloud provider should be as easy as swapping keys for a car. Migrating data to a second cloud, clearing out your data, and leaving your original provider is the best approach currently - but only you have the technical tools necessary to traverse between environments.  

Enterprises should leverage the freedom to pick and choose providers that cater to the business' specific needs - using two or more clouds is in everyone's best interest. Much like an organization would host their data on both onsite and offsite data centers, they can now take advantage of multiple layers of resiliency. One provider might work fine for an SMB, but storing data, applications, and other business-critical information across thousands of machines has too many security risks to rely on one cloud.

Put your seatbelt on - the cloud computing landscape is making fast turns to a future with multi-cloud solutions taking the front seat.

About the Author

A 25-year veteran in the IT industry, Fredrik Schmidt is responsible for driving the development of innovative cloud products and solutions at Accelerite. Prior to joining Accelerite, Fredrik served as Technical Director at Symantec, Senior IT/IS Director at Technicolor by Thomson, and CIO and Co-Founder of Kryptonite Security.