What is polycloud architecture and why do you need it? 

Rapid technological progress gives rise to a regular supply of new concepts and approaches – such as the recent emergence of polycloud architecture. What is polycloud, why do you need it, and how do you define polycloud vs multi cloud? Read on to discover all you need to know.

What is polycloud?

 Let’s start with the basics: What is polycloud? The term refers to the intentional mixing and matching of specific services from different cloud providers within a single architecture. The idea is that you can harness best-in-class capabilities from different providers to build workloads and flows that span multiple cloud services, as well as hybrid and on-premise deployments.

 Let’s say, for example, that you build an analytics platform using Google BigQuery for querying large datasets. A polycloud approach means you could use (say) Tyk for API management and routing transformation requests, along with Azure Cognitive Services for language analysis. The services work together as part of one cohesive pipeline. The data lands in BigQuery, Tyk routes transformation requests to the appropriate microservices, and the results are sent to Azure for NLP. The outputs then return to the product.

By intentionally combining best-in-class services in this vendor-neutral way, you end up with a single interconnected workflow that harnesses the strength of each provider. This is the essence of a polycloud architecture.

How is polycloud different from multi cloud?

You’re likely already familiar with the concept of a multi cloud environment, so let’s compare polycloud vs multi cloud.

A multi cloud setup involves using different cloud providers for different workloads. This often results from organic business growth and mergers and acquisitions. It can help avoid vendor lock-in and support you to optimize cost and/or performance.

That said, a multi cloud environment is not without its limitations. It may require you to replicate or segregate data in ways that a polycloud architecture would not, for example.

Likewise, a polycloud architecture can also have drawbacks. For example, a multi cloud design keeps workloads separate and self-contained. That makes it fairly simple to run backup versions of essential workloads on second clouds, for the purpose of resilience. With polycloud workloads spanning and combining multiple clouds, redundancy becomes more complex.  

We can showcase a polycloud vs multi cloud comparison by considering it in relation to different technologies, such as APIs, SaaS, or AI:

• APIs: In a multi cloud architecture, APIs abstract differences between providers, so that each workload can stay portable across clouds. In a polycloud architecture, the APIs serve as a glue that connects diverse services from multiple clouds to deliver a unified system.
• SaaS: Using a multi cloud SaaS approach means choosing each SaaS application as an independent service, with different clouds hosting different applications. With a polycloud approach, you integrate different SaaS tools as components in a unified infrastructure, choosing each for its specific strength. Shared data and APIs connect the components to achieve this.
• AI: A multi cloud AI setup involves running AI workloads on the clouds that offer preferred compute or compliance but typically keeping them siloed. Polycloud, meanwhile, encompasses combining cloud-specific AI strengths into a single, cohesive AI pipeline. You could use model hosting from one vendor, for example, and data tools from another.

It’s easy to see the differences between polycloud vs multi cloud by comparing the two side-by-side:

What are the benefits of polycloud deployment?

There are numerous benefits to polycloud, though the extent to which your organization will benefit depends on your specific deployment, architectural, and network considerations. Key polycloud benefits can include: 

• Optimized performance, with the ability to deploy the best cloud model for each element of a workload.
• Flexible service delivery, as you move beyond the constraints of any single cloud provider and can blend hybrid and on-premise infrastructure components.
• Rapid adoption, with the ability to incorporate emerging AI models, security features, databases, and so on without needing to migrate your entire architecture.
• Resilience against provider limitations, as you can route workloads to different providers to avoid feature gaps, performance bottlenecks, regional limitations, or pricing concerns.

Ultimately, being able to pick and choose cloud services enables you to move beyond the capability limitations of any single provider, with your workload components distributed across multiple providers instead. You can use this approach to make your setup more resilient, flexible, and performant.

Polycloud vs hybrid cloud cost comparison

 Any cost comparison will depend on your needs, how you configure and distribute your workloads, and which providers you use for which services. That said, if you’re keen to manage costs effectively (and who isn’t, these days?), then it’s important to consider whether a polycloud setup is cost-efficient.

It may be tempting to try and compare polycloud and hybrid cloud costs, but remember that the two approaches serve different purposes and have different cost drivers. 

Bear in mind that polycloud intentionally uses multiple clouds simultaneously. This increases the operational complexity and costs compared to a hybrid model that combines on-premise infrastructure with a single cloud. The polycloud model will require cross-cloud data transfers and more complex orchestration, pushing up costs – but it also services a different use case and delivers different benefits. 

It’s the same with polycloud vs multi cloud. Polycloud is often more expensive due to the cost of integration, data movement, and orchestration layers.

Despite this, polycloud can be cost-effective if you use it strategically, with benefits offsetting the cost to orchestrate and manage everything. Examples of cost-efficient ways to implement a polycloud workload include:

• Using the cheapest or most efficient cloud provider for a specific task and for running compute-heavy workloads.
• Offloading latency sensitive tasks to whichever cloud has the fastest relevant service, to reduce wasted compute cycles and retries.
• Splitting workloads across clouds as part of a strategic resource right-sizing approach, to avoid over-provisioning.
• Keeping heavy data processing in the same cloud as storage or analytics, to optimize data egress and reduce expensive inter-cloud transfers.
• Being proactive in the way you monitor cloud costs so you can leverage free tiers or credits.
• Reducing regulatory costs by storing sensitive and/or regulated data in clouds that meet regulators’ governance and compliance requirements (rather than paying more to do this in other providers).

Is polycloud more expensive than single-cloud setups?

 Just as costs can increase with polycloud vs multi cloud, a polycloud approach can also be more expensive than a single-cloud setup. Not only are you using more providers with polycloud but you’re increasing your complexity and therefore most likely your costs.

 There is, of course, the argument that a polycloud approach avoids being locked into a single vendor and the associated costs and technical debt. True – but polycloud also raises the specter of multi-vendor lock-in. Your systems can end up depending on the unique capabilities of several cloud providers instead of just one, which can end up making a polycloud architecture significantly more expensive than a single vendor lock-in would be. That said, using multiple services that you can switch in and out without redesigning your entire architecture does tend to give you more negotiating leverage than with single-vendor lock-in. 

 Whether the benefits are worth the extra expense is entirely based on your specific use case and business goals. If your IT investment decisions aren’t yet aligned to your strategic business aims, it might be time to read up on the benefits of enterprise architecture.

Which companies use polycloud strategies?

 Polycloud strategies can be used in any industry and any vertical. Users range from  larger enterprises to small startups. Many of the latter use polycloud patterns (such as Auth0 with AWS, Stripe, and SendGrid) by default – even if they don’t call them that. 

 Generally speaking, companies using polycloud strategies tend to have a very specific goal in mind – hence the need for specialized service combinations and workflows. They could be building AI pipelines, for example, or in need of advanced analytic capabilities that are interoperable across cloud providers.

Does polycloud improve reliability?

Does polycloud make workloads more reliable? Interesting question. Polycloud certainly can provide greater reliability, as you can build critical workloads using the most reliable services from a range of different providers. You can use the fastest, most stable services for each task to reduce processing delays and failures. In addition, if one service has an outage, it doesn’t impact your entire workflow; other parts can continue to run. This provider-level redundancy is a significant advantage in terms of overall reliability. 

Just remember that introducing cross-cloud dependencies and data transfer between clouds adds new points of failure when you opt for a polycloud vs multi cloud approach.

What tools help manage a polycloud environment?

 With APIs playing a critical role in flowing data between multiple clouds and diverse services, the right API management platform is a crucial tool for efficiently managing your polycloud environment.

 Other useful tools to support your polycloud strategy include cloud orchestration and workflow engines, monitoring and observability tools, and IAM platforms to enforce consistent security policies across multiple clouds.

 Data integration and ETL platforms are also useful for moving and transforming data between cloud services, while infrastructure-as-code capabilities can enable you to automate provisioning. Other handy tools could include service mesh or networking platforms, which can help you manage communication, routing, and resiliency.

With protecting your budget in mind, you could also leverage cost management and optimization tools to track usage and monitor and control spending across clouds.

Talk to Tyk about your polycloud strategy

 Tyk’s robust, highly performant and vendor neutral approach to API management can do much to support your polycloud plans. If you’re going down the polycloud route, get in touch with our helpful team to discuss how our universal API management solution can enhance your strategy and help you control your costs.