Many organisations have jumped on the cloud adoption bandwagon to leverage the benefits of cloud computing for their business. According to an Everest Group study, the vast majority of enterprises are moving towards a hybrid cloud approach, with 67% of enterprises having a hybrid-first or private-first cloud strategy and almost half (46%) of enterprise workloads are on, or expected to be on, hybrid/private cloud. On top of that, many businesses are already taking the multi-cloud route, leveraging, on average, nearly 5 different cloud platforms, according to reports.

When it comes to IT, modern businesses want agility, flexibility and the freedom of choice. They no longer want to be locked into any one vendor or platform, both for their on-prem and cloud environments. A truly hybrid multi-cloud approach gives them this agility, flexibility and freedom, especially in terms of leveraging the resources of, and moving workloads between on-premises and different clouds as their requirements and costs change over time.

Making that happen, however, is easier said than done.

Sure, when migrating to the cloud, it is entirely possible to “cloud enable,” your legacy applications that were designed to reside on in-house servers or data centres (although this approach comes with numerous drawbacks and limitations). You could also take the cloud-native route. However, if you have to leverage the native services of a particular cloud platform, it’s easy to find yourself locked into that specific vendor as moving to a different provider would be difficult and complex.

While such approaches would still technically allow businesses to jump onto the hybrid cloud bandwagon, what’s missing is the ease, freedom and fluidity to move workloads and applications where it needs to be, wherever makes the most sense – This is something that only becomes possible when an organisation embraces a cloud-agnostic approach.

As a leading provider of multi-cloud services, VMware has made it its goal to enable businesses to become cloud-agnostic ready. VMware does this in a number of ways. For instance, VMware Cloud allows you to run, manage, connect, and protect all of your apps on any cloud, so you can choose the cloud or clouds that best meet your business needs for the ultimate in cloud computing flexibility.

Customers can benefit from the quickest path to production with VMware Cloud because the multi-cloud capabilities help overcome these challenges. For instance:

• Native ability to run, secure and operate traditional and cloud-native workloads concurrently and without compromise.

• Move applications seamlessly to any cloud.

• Cloud visibility, optimisation, automation, and security to ensure consistent operations, anywhere.

• Enable and accelerate agile, modern app development by leveraging built-in Kubernetes.

Remember the vendor lock-in risk that was issued earlier? VMware's multi-cloud strategy provides a wide range of mitigation factors, including:

• Full workload portability, including repatriation, if necessary.

• A global network of cloud providers and partners offering every type of service in thousands of locations around the world.

• Cloud-agnostic application development and management.

• Strategic partnerships and integrations with all major public cloud providers.

It’s time to unlock the value of any cloud. To learn more about VMware Cloud and how it can help your organisation become a cloud-agnostic ready business, click here.