Managing data has never been more complicated — or important. From juggling multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments, to the rapid rise of AI, keeping critical data safe is a growing challenge. Traditional backup methods just don’t cut it anymore. Let’s take a closer look at the biggest obstacles, common mistakes, and strategies for protecting your data in a complex, AI-driven world.
Multi-Cloud Challenges: Balance, Visibility, and Control
In multi-cloud environments, achieving centralized control while leveraging the best features of each cloud provider can feel like walking a tightrope. Many organizations aim to standardize their processes by replicating on-premises solutions in the cloud — deploying virtual appliances to mirror their existing infrastructure. While this approach seems logical, it often proves costly, inflexible, and difficult to scale. Here are a few common multi-cloud challenges, mistakes, and how to avoid them:
DIY Cloud-Native Management
DIY cloud-native management often leads to scalability issues and operational inefficiencies. Managing multiple tools across different clouds increases complexity, making it harder to maintain consistency and streamline workflows.
Common Mistake: While building custom solutions for managing cloud-native tools may seem empowering, it rarely scales well. Managing multiple tools across different clouds creates operational complexity and inefficiency.
How to Avoid It: Adopt a centralized solution that integrates natively with cloud platforms. This streamlines operations, eliminates logistical headaches, and ensures scalability. Regularly review and update your tools to align with evolving cloud technologies.
Discovery is Key: Protecting the Right Data, Always
Visibility is a major challenge in multi-cloud environments. With numerous cloud accounts and SaaS applications in use, backup teams often lack clarity on which data requires protection until it’s too late. By the time data loss occurs, the damage may already be irreversible.
Common Mistake: Unclear cross-cloud policies. Without clear policies in place, organizations face issues like high egress fees and inefficient recovery processes, leading to costly mistakes.
How to Avoid It: Use solutions built specifically for multi-cloud environments with intelligent policies that address challenges like networking and identity management during recovery.
Data Sovereignty and Compliance: Navigating a Shifting Landscape
Evolving compliance regulations demand agility and preparation for stricter cross-cloud requirements. Frameworks like DORA encourage businesses to reduce reliance on a single cloud provider and implement cross-cloud backups as a strategy for resilience. Additionally, data sovereignty often restricts sensitive data from leaving specific regions, even for backups.
Common Mistake: The lowest common denominator approach. Many organizations replicate on-premises solutions by spinning up virtual appliances in the cloud. This approach is costly, inflexible, and fails to meet the dynamic needs of cloud workloads.
How to Avoid It: Invest in cloud-native solutions designed for agility and compliance. These solutions enable backups within the same region (e.g., AWS and Azure) while maintaining the flexibility, scalability, and resilience businesses need to meet regulatory demands.
By understanding these challenges, avoiding common pitfalls, and adopting purpose-built solutions, organizations can navigate the complexities of multi-cloud environments more effectively.
Embrace Multi-Cloud Data Resilience with Druva
As businesses navigate multi-cloud complexity, compliance pressures, and the rise of AI, one thing is clear: the old ways of managing backups are no longer enough. Organizations need modern, cloud-native solutions that offer simplicity, scalability, and resilience.
At Druva, we deliver a seamless, agentless cloud-native solution that ensures security, simplicity, and cost efficiency, all through a fully managed SaaS platform. Explore how our unified platform can help streamline data resilience with our white paper on multi-cloud data resilience.
Protect everything from traditional workloads to SaaS applications and AI pipelines with ease.