What Is Polycloud? Leveraging Cloud Differentiation in Modern Digital Applications

Multicloud loosely describes an organization's use of more than one cloud provider, but the term doesn't reveal much beyond that. The polycloud model, on the other hand, addresses the recent trend by cloud providers to add differentiated capabilities that allow organizations to use different cloud providers for different purposes. Many organizations adopting a cloud strategy today are pursuing services that fit the new polycloud model. In this report, recognized industry thought leader Lee Atchison describes what polycloud is and how it compares to and differs from other cloud architectural models, including multicloud. C-suite and engineering executives will learn where, when, and how to take advantage of the polycloud paradigm. You'll also learn when to specifically avoid using it. Cloud providers are creating more sophisticated services and are starting to differentiate these capabilities among themselves. These differentiations can take a variety of forms: • The types of infrastructure provided, such as Microsoft Windows Servers versus Linux servers • The types of services offered, such as specialized machine learning and artificial intelligence services • The topics of analytics provided or auxiliary tools and services provided over and above the base capabilities Large, complex applications take advantage of many of these specialized services and often will use different services from different cloud providers, based on the specific specialized services available. As such, an application may make use of multiple cloud providers to provide different service capabilities. Understand the advantages and disadvantages of using a polycloud architecture Explore examples of polycloud architectures for fictitious applications Review guidelines that can help you be successful with a polycloud architectural strategy Learn how to improve availability in a polycloud environment Explore examples of service-differentiated polycloud architectures Decide when you should use a polycloud rather than a multicloud or single cloud environment