2022: The Year Object Storage and Kubernetes Put the Multi-Cloud Within Reach

In this article Anand Babu Periasamy, CEO, MinIO discusses why 2022 will be a game-changing year for multi-cloud, and how the combination of Kubernetes and object storage will put the multi-cloud within reach for everyone. 

That cloud usage will continue to grow in 2022 is obvious. The question to ask here is how will it grow? The focus will continue towards ease of use, portability of microservices and data, and improved edge connectivity. Organizations will embrace architectures that enable elastic scalability and always-on availability across multiple clouds – public, private, edge – while building processes that balance the cost and performance of workloads and data across clouds.  

Forward-looking cloud architects are shaping this evolution. They are building solutions that leverage the best parts of multiple clouds to push enterprise use of cloud-native technologies forward. This year, we’ll begin to see the shift towards the hybrid cloud (on-premise, private, public at one provider). The acceleration and expansion to form the multi-cloud is the next development phase. The multi-cloud, being a hyper-connected and loosely integrated set of geographically separated services and data repositories, enables resource access on-demand to everyone company-wide. 

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Building the Future With Hybrid and Multi-cloud Structures

The line between hybrid cloud and multi-cloud is already quite blurry – and getting blurrier. Hybrid can be thought of as any mix of on-prem, edge, and a single public cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure). Multi-cloud takes this to the next level with the addition of multiple public clouds. There are many reasons to do this – avoiding lock-in, cost savings, gaining access to cloud-specific services, increasing operational agility and customer demand. 

The truth is that it’s happening already. Earlier in 2021, Flexera reported that 92% of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy and already use nearly three (2.6) public and three (2.7) private clouds. That means that the average enterprise runs between five and six clouds today. 

It is hardly seamless, however. Serious challenges crop up with the added complexity of running different workloads on different clouds. Unfortunately, the multi-cloud is nothing more than a series of silos for many enterprises. The “common denominators” are not nearly as common as they should be, and that is where the seams of the system glare at us in the face. 

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Kubernetes to the Rescue

Fortunately, cloud-native S3-compatible object storage is the common denominator that enables multi-cloud success. Software-defined object storage is the only portable, performant solution and enables enterprises to run workloads on the cloud best suited for them. Kubernetes-native object storage alleviates the burden of managing underlying infrastructure and integrations for security, identity, monitoring and other core functions.

Kubernetes paired with object storage solves many of the challenges presented by the multi-cloud. Kubernetes has commoditized significant portions of the infrastructure stack in the cloud, and object storage brings network accessible and portable storage to play.

The pieces are finally in place for the multi-cloud to take off. Enterprises that pair Kubernetes with S3-compatible, high-performance, software-defined object storage are poised to reap the benefits of multi-cloud architectures. Businesses that put these two complementary technologies to work for them in 2022 can attack every cloud from a product-first perspective, abstracting the infrastructure entirely.

Opening up the multi-cloud means that sophisticated and demanding workloads like real-time analytics and AI/ML can be transparently pushed between the edge, data center, and multiple private and public clouds. Enterprise builders now have direct access to essential cloud tools with software-defined object storage, containerization, microservices, multi-tenancy, and orchestration with Kubernetes. 

2022 will be a game-changing year for the multi-cloud. Industry leaders are already moving aggressively to field their software across many clouds. Key enablers are Kubernetes to handle infrastructure and object storage to provide scalable, high-performance and consistent storage across clouds. The combination of Kubernetes and object storage put the multi-cloud within reach for everyone.  

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