Cloud Application Sprawl in Enterprise Applications

As we continue to deploy more vendor-hosted or cloud-based applications, we are starting to experience a phenomenon that can be called cloud sprawl. This cloud sprawl is resulting in a new set of issues and complexities that this article explores. The sprawl occurs as more applications requiring integration are hosted in different cloud environments and cloud providers. These issues are particularly critical for those applications that are tightly integrated with other applications, such as the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The applications considered here are large, server-based applications at the enterprise level, traditionally hosted in our own data center.