Companies aiming to move computing workloads to a multicloud environment find the road strewn with question marks. Which workloads should live where, and why? What’s the smoothest on-ramp?

“What we’re hearing from customers is, there’s a lot of confusion in the market,” said Rob Strechay (pictured), senior vice president of product at Zerto Inc. They realize that their multicloud environment won’t be just Amazon Web Services Inc. or Microsoft Corp.’s Azure, for instance, he explained.

Strechay spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the VTUG Winter Warmer event in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Attendees at the event echo Zerto customers’ sentiment around multicloud, Strechay stated, namely, “How do you look for the ability to have that data mobility between clouds, but with security?”

Taking multicloud measurements

Direct experience with customers has taught Strechay that clouds are not all created equally. “Your mileage will vary with the different clouds, and being able to go there and test on them is very important,” he said. One Zerto customer was surprised to find that certain Linux systems run better on Azure than Amazon, for example. In addition to performance, cost can also vary among different clouds. 

All that testing sounds a bit tedious. Disaster recovery can provide a shortcut, according to Strechay. Many Zerto customers are using DR as a service as a stepping stone to the Cloud. “It’s a nice, easy way in. They can get their feet wet; they can test out the performance, the security. They can do user acceptance testing without actually having to go there. They can also get a realistic view of the cost,” he said. Additionally, DR’s data mobility and flexibility can help customers ditch vendor lock-in. 

Zerto’s DR platform is consistent across all clouds, Strechay pointed out. “We’ve got to be heterogeneous, but we’ve got to make it all look the same and be the same user experience,” he concluded. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer.

Photo: SiliconANGLE