Intelligent CIO North America Issue 13 | Page 45

CIO OPINION different interface and method of communicating with the product . But the primary pain point is the lack of uniform APIs across the industry .
In contrast , going back to the electricity example , people who live in deregulated energy states can shop around for the best plans online and switch providers within a matter of minutes . The process is not only simple , but seamless for the customer , with the physical changeover taking place behind the scenes without any power interruptions .
Solutions to interoperability
Cloud Orchestration ( CO ) tools could make switching between cloud providers just as easy . The CO platform is an abstraction layer that basically acts as an interpreter between the infrastructure and the respective cloud . The infrastructure ‘ talks ’ to the abstraction layer , which in turn translates the communication into the language that the cloud provider ‘ speaks ’.
Despite the availability of third-party CO providers and the resources within some companies to develop their solutions in house , organizations have yet to realize these capabilities . One of the problems is the sheer pace at which cloud providers , and the hyperscalers in particular , are moving with some launching dozens of new services every year .
The fact that hyperscalers offer virtualization platforms within their cloud is another indication of the migration challenges companies face . Most only need to run specific applications in the cloud , not the entire virtualization platform . While the latter approach may help simplify migrations and offer the additional advantage of working within an ecosystem that has been developed for cloud-native applications , it prevents organizations from fully leveraging the benefits of a public cloud and can result in vendor dependence .
According to a recent 451 Research survey , seven out of 10 organizations believe a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy saves them from vendor lock-in , and a similar number say their hybrid / multi-cloud strategy is a significant investment focus over the next 12 months .
To move forward , companies should aim for a greater degree of IT orchestration , which in turn ,
The fact that hyperscalers offer virtualization platforms within their cloud is another indication of the migration challenges companies face .
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