Hybrid Cloud Strategy: Cost-Effective, Secure, Scalable

As IoT, analytics, and AI shine the light toward business modernization, global industries witness an ‘innovation’ roadblock ahead. This barrier, caused by legacy IT systems can only be broken when organizations are able to capitalize on the digitalization opportunities. A major factor then would be to focus on creating value rather than traditional business operations. But balancing current operational and productivity demands with future business goals can add extra pressure on the company.

Hybrid Cloud to the Rescue

In this situation, organizations are exploring technology solutions like cloud computing to resolve the challenge. An e-commerce company, for example, uses the public cloud to support traffic during peak buying season. While short-term fixes bring added revenue, the company will lose out on improving their business for the long term. For this, the imperative is to adopt a cloud model that can fulfill every need of the company: flexibility to deliver on speed, scalability to better utilize resources and support capacity requirements, and security to protect sensitive information and improve disaster recovery. 

The hybrid cloud has become a favorable solution to this challenge. In fact, 85% of IT decision makers have realized that hybrid cloud is the ideal model. An interoperable environment that blends together public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises, the hybrid cloud enables IT teams to seamlessly move workloads between them, depending on their needs. This flexibility is enabled by carefully designing the hybrid cloud architecture and orchestrating them for communication.

As one size of hybrid cloud would never fit all businesses, organizations will need a team that can plan, deploy, and manage the hybrid cloud. The issue is that 94% organizations lack the skills to design and establish the right hybrid cloud mix in-house. It is less wonder then that the cross-industry hybrid cloud penetration level worldwide is currently on average 18.5%.

A Cost-Effective Solution to Hybrid Cloud Implementation

Organizations have a plethora of hybrid cloud solution options on offer. Major players like AWS, Azure, Red Hat, and Google provide a variety of service offerings. Their approach, however, is different from each other. For instance, Azure offers virtual network cloud while AWS provides virtual private cloud. The former charges users on per-minute basis while the latter has adopted the per-hour pricing model. These differences tend to leave organizations more confused than aware of the best solution for their specific requirements. The hybrid cloud model, on the other hand, allows enterprises for what they use as they use.  

It is, therefore, necessary to take hybrid cloud into consideration along with the other two cloud models before arriving at a decision. In this regard, the hybrid cloud adoption framework plays a determining role in the successful integration of public and private clouds. The right framework will enable an organization to manage the hybrid cloud environment cost-effectively and without intermittent hiccups pertaining to re-architecting the infrastructure.

The beginning of every hybrid cloud journey should involve a thorough assessment and identification of the business requirements. This is crucial to recognize business and security risks, understand existing/current capacity requirement, eliminate gaps in efficiency, determine capital and operational budgets, and plan for future upgrades. For this, the organization will have to conduct an in-depth maturity and application assessment. The IT team can then build a strategy and roadmap, encompassing both requirements and expectations. Hybrid cloud enablement providers play a pivotal role here as cloud providers do not facilitate adoption strategy. Third-party technology partners recommend the right cloud mix for the business but also provide support for migration, application development, and DevOps. 

A Sustainable Hybrid Cloud Journey 

The hybrid cloud adoption framework acts as a guide for organizations to maximize benefits from hybrid cloud deployment. The biggest benefit is improved resource utilization and reduced CAPEX and OPEX while leveraging their existing infrastructure. Organizations will also be able to extract greater value from better usage predictability and gain more visibility into computing costs. The greater control over hybrid cloud applications minimizes shadow IT, where employees use unauthorized applications to get their work done.

The business landscape is evolving more quickly with time due to rapid technological innovations. Yesterday’s solution may become redundant tomorrow. So, infrastructure flexibility is going to be the determinant of which enterprises will be able to adapt to the changing ecosystem. That flexibility is what hybrid cloud brings to the table.