The buzz word ?hybrid? is used quite often these days to illustrate a product which is derived through a combination of two or more elements or technologies.
The IT cloud computing segment is one of the leading sectors to adopt hybridization. In today?s world most small to large enterprise level companies are looking to ride the ?Cloud Computing? wave as they look to reduce Capex/Opex costs in this competitive world. CXOs are working with their staff to define the right cloud strategy for their organizations but are often caught up in conflicting directions. As there is a big difference between ?cloud? for bottom-line improvement and ?cloud? for top-line improvement. These approaches can lead to inconsistent strategies, as cloud does not have a plain vanilla offering for all types of services or enterprises. So organizations need to understand the risks of ignoring these very different approaches.
Determining the Right Cloud Strategy
To establish a realistic cloud adoption strategy, it is essential that you understand your enterprise goals and objectives. To do this right, during the planning process you need to identify:
- New capabilities that the business needs to bring to the market in the next 12 months
- Services or applications currently constrained due to time to market needs
- Opportunities to preserve capital or avoidance of operating expenses
- Requirements to provide universal access to consumers, customers, or devices
- Loss of business due to scale constraints of applications or services
Moving Your Hybrid Cloud Strategy Forward
Hybrid cloud strategies adopted by most organizations today use a judicious mix of public and private clouds. Typically, cloud infrastructure providers sell storage space, bandwidth, and computing power to companies at much cheaper rates than the cost of actual, physical servers. While this saves companies dollars, it also raises concerns on accessibility, availability, and security.
Most companies would think twice before porting sensitive data onto a public cloud, and prefer to store such information on their own private servers. This type of thinking has resulted in some businesses setting up their own cloud-like computing processes, which in turn, created what is known as the private cloud.
While private clouds work in the same way as public clouds, they are meant exclusively for the company in question and can be restricted by firewalls from the outside world. Private cloud is also thought to provide more security and better performance.
As a result, the of use public clouds for less sensitive tasks and the preference for of private clouds for vital processing tasks has led to the adoption of hybrid cloud strategies. This approach helps most organizations save IT costs without compromising on the security and availability.
Why Hybrid Cloud, Why Now
It?s been reported that more than 70 percent of organizations are using or evaluating a hybrid cloud solution. However, the fact remains that most organizations are still evaluating this technology with more vendors being evaluated versus those in use.
So what does this mean? If you want to reap the rewards of hybrid cloud before your competition does, the time is now for you to take the next steps in your cloud journey.
