A multicloud is an IT infrastructure deployment strategy relying on several cloud providers and platforms but without a link to one service provider. There are several reasons for businesses to choose multicloud. The main reason is that they can preserve their technological and financial independence from the provider, increase the IT system accessibility thanks to increasing fault tolerance, and select specific cloud offers to meet their specific tasks. Sergei Samoukin, Head of the Cloud Solutions Division of the Cloud Technology Department at Softline, presents our portfolio of in-house and partner multicloud services and explains how Softline implements its multicloud strategy.
Why did Softline decide to develop multicloud services?
From its early years on, Softline has always been a multivendor company. We sell software and hardware from different vendors, and we excel at it! The multicloud strategy of Softline has many years of history. In fact, at the very moment when our company entered the cloud market, our cloud service development strategy had been based on a multivendor approach. Over five years ago, we started selling cloud services such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Azure, IBM.
What is the principle of Softline cloud strategy?
We develop a branded solution portfolio and offer solutions from our partners: Azure, Amazon, IBM, Softlayer, Google. One might ask why do we need such a big vendor pool. The answer is simple: we want to satisfy the requirements of any customer. For example, if the customer finds a service of one vendor unsuitable, we offer a service from another vendor or a branded cloud. The main benefit here is interchangeability. It is possible to draw an analogy with cloud business: why do touristic agencies work with many different operators? To meet the demand and be more flexible.
What branded multicloud services does our company have now?
We offer vendor clouds and in-house solutions. A vendor cloud on a VMware platform has been hosted in 7 data centers from 6 cities of Russia: Moscow (2 sites), Saint Petersburg, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Ekaterinburg, and Novosibirsk. We have 7 independent clouds which can be combined in different ways to meet the customer's tasks. We also have a branded cloud powered by Hyper-V 2016 and ready-to-use tools for private cloud deployment (hybrid solutions: private + public clouds).
What partner solutions does Softline offer?
We offer the following IaaS solutions from our partners: a partner's Open Stack hosted in Moscow, a partner's Open Stack hosted in Europe, a VMware stack in Europe, private clouds in Europe, Microsoft Azure, AWS, IBM, Google. All these services are unrelated to each other, and the only thing that unites them is that they can be purchased from Softline.
How do you plan to develop your multicloud strategy? What is the strategic goal of Softline?
Our priorities are the development of existing services and the creation of new ones, for example, building S3-compatible storages. We will develop an in-house platform, proactively monitor the market, and improve the expertise on these lines of business. Our company strives to create a single control panel for all our solutions that will increase the decision-making speed for our customers. The customers will be able to solve many tasks without our assistance from a portal that works as a one-stop shop.
