Dive Brief:

• Global Payments is balancing cloud deployments between Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services in an effort to provide the seamless digital experience that customers demand, according to its latest earnings report. The multicloud setup divides provider responsibility between two of business's largest segments. 

• Google Cloud is Global Payments' preferred cloud provider for merchant payment technologies, Cameron Bready, president and COO, said on the earnings call Monday. As the company announced in August 2020, AWS supports a cloud-based issuer processing platform for the company. 

• With the cloud partnerships, Global Payments aims to "provide additional scale, reach and speed-to-market," improving the customer experience, a Global Payments spokesperson said. The goal is an omnichannel, digital payments experience accommodating consumer preferences in the wake of COVID-19.

Dive Insight:

Global Payments' has been in the cloud for "many years" with essentially all of the business's new products and solutions developed in cloud-native environments, according to a spokesperson for the company. 

"Today we are utilizing cloud-based SaaS technologies internally across nearly all of our infrastructure, from sales management to data analytics to finance, accounting and human resources," the spokesperson said. 

The AWS and Google Cloud collaborations discussed on the call are more recent initiatives, announced in 2020 and 2021, respectively. 

AWS supports modernization initiatives on the issuer side, providing a cloud-based processing platform for customers of all sizes and locations. The data was lifted and shifted over to a cloud-hosted environment, according to CEO Jeff Sloan.

Meanwhile, Global Payments will work with Google on the merchant environment. Because much of the merchant side is already cloud-native, it will be "more of a shift rather than a lift and shift" to host on the Google hub, said Sloan. "We are just blending their products into our merchant cloud environment more seamlessly."

More than 70% of administrators surveyed in the State of Cloud Learning Report 2020 by A Cloud Guru said AWS was the primary cloud provider used in their organization. But a nearly identical number confirmed that the organization operates in multiple clouds. 

When businesses go multicloud, "they are using those other cloud providers for specific workloads that better align to the strength of that cloud provider," according to Drew Firment, SVP of Cloud Transformation at A Cloud Guru.

The strategic use of multicloud to support different sides of the business plays to the strengths of each environment. But mastery of one cloud environment before adding another helps businesses get the most out of the environment.

"The prevailing wisdom is: Pick a cloud and get good at it," said Firment. "The unknowns become knowns and we can make those strategic decisions a little bit more purposeful."

Multicloud is becoming inevitable, whether businesses stumble into it organically or plan strategically to add another cloud to their repertoire, according to Firment. Vendors are closing the gaps making it easier to operate in multiple clouds, but business strategy up front is what determines success. 

First, a cloud center of excellence or program office indicates the cloud team has the executive team, budget and purpose behind the effort, according to Firment. Then, a straightforward use case that doesn't overcomplicate the initial effort helps set the foundation.