There are more choices then ever when it come to picking the right public cloud platform for the right workload.

Even though all the major public cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud, all have similar offerings for common workloads, their available services are increasingly diverse. Choosing the right one can be tough choice for just a single application migration, let alone deciding what should be in your multi-cloud environment.

Find a balance

Selecting a single cloud platform that will meet all your needs has its appeal, but a multi-cloud environment offers redundancy and keeps you from being locked into a single vendor. But although there’s value in a best-of-breed approach to meet specific business application needs, you also want to avoid cloud sprawl. While you should choose your public cloud platform based on which one can best meet requirements, some compromises might be sensible if it means keeping your public cloud provider portfolio manageable.

SMBs will get the biggest bang for their buck to by making sure your public cloud adoption improves productivity without making your IT team work harder or requiring a great deal of user support. Collaboration applications should be easy for remote workers to use anywhere, regardless of device, such as Microsoft Office 365 or Google Docs. For business users who have specific needs, such as sales and marketing, you may need a public cloud instance for a CRM tool. Your selection criteria should consider available integrations across different public cloud platforms—many vendors do play nice with each other and work well in tandem.

Standardizing on a small number of public cloud platforms will provide productivity gains while lowering your total cost of ownership and keeping IT staff free to work on other more strategic projects such as digital transformation efforts.

Prioritize security

Bolstering security, especially at a time when many employees are working remotely, should be just as important as meeting your business requirements. Public cloud platforms can bring a lot to the table because they can apply the same capabilities to your mission-critical data as they do to their own infrastructure. However, when you adopt a multi-cloud strategy, it’s important to remember that security is a shared responsibility—be sure to know what your role is and what the cloud provider is responsible for.

A multi-cloud strategy enables organizations to leverage the ideal platform for the right business need but building your own multi-cloud environment can seem overwhelming. An experienced managed IT services provider can help you get the most from your public cloud deployments so you can successfully select the right public cloud platform for each workload.