The future of hybrid cloud
Cloud computing has provided and will continue providing businesses the flexibility and efficiencies that they need to grow and meet the demands of all users. It provides the necessary infrastructure, software and platforms to meet the requirements of all manner of organisations. But the question remains as to which model is best — public or private cloud?
Hybrid cloud is positioned to address this argument as it allows users to get the best out of both worlds. Strictly speaking, the term hybrid refers to creating something else by combining two different elements. In the case of cloud, the premise remains the same, butthere is no all-encompassing definition — it means different things to different people. However, the right mix — whether that’s heritage on-premises hosting and colocation, or leveraging services within dynamic public cloud — will be different for each and every business.
Many of the initial barriers around adoption of hybrid cloud, such as security and costs, have been addressed and businesses are now looking to get the most from their investment. But, what is on the horizon and how is cloud adoption going to occur in the future?
Hybrid cloud can be used in many ways. It’s a good platform for building confidence in cloud, developing a transformation programme on and carrying it out. In the same vein, it may be a deployment model that must be used for compliance, regulatory, risk, latency or data sovereignty issues. Regardless of intent, the first and potentially the most important step for any organisation is to define their cloud aspirations.
This can be done in several ways, including conducting a cloud readiness assessment, which determines an organisation’s current state the steps needed to start the journey. Only then can a business formulate a cloud adoption transformation programme.
The public cloud market is dominated by a few large hyperscale players but what are they doing to pave the way for a hybrid future?
In 2017 Microsoft launched Azure Stack as the answer to the hybrid cloud conundrum. Azure Stack is an extension of Azure, allowing users to run an Azure environment from within their own premises or third-party datacentre. The benefits include pay-as-you-go pricing, and the ability to develop applications in-house in an Azure environment that’s the same as public Azure. In a nutshell, users can create a private cloud with public cloud capabilities.
AWS has been supplying large-scale public cloud to the market for more than 10 years.
