As countries reopen, uncertainties loom large without any insights into how the pandemic might play out. The current situation has made us experience the VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) world in its truest sense. Organizations, at the moment, are looking at stably navigating through this new normal, and creating a differentiated digital foundation in the longer run that would help them steer through all future disruptions and stay relevant in the highly competitive ecosystem. It is important that they are able to create agility, scalability and resilience in their technology landscapes without the fear of inhibitors such as lock-in, cost and complexity to name a few.
Data and applications are certainly the secret weapons for an Organization that allow it to create a differentiated construct, vis-a-vis its peers in the industry. Both data and applications are critical to any Organization's success. But at the same time, they should be supported by a responsive and robust underlying infrastructure that is able to withstand unprecedented loads. A hybrid cloud approach helps organizations achieve rapid scale while adapting to continuously evolving business models, withstanding disruptions and creating digital value across multiple cloud platforms and on-premises infrastructure.
A business continuity survey from Gartner highlighted that only 12% of organizations are highly prepared for the impact of coronavirus. With a majority of the workforce working remotely and customers increasingly accessing services online, organizations need to ensure stability of critical workloads that support core business operations. Such workloads need to be hosted on infrastructure that can be dynamically scaled up or down to cater to demand uncertainties and be resilient enough to withstand disasters and disruptions. Moreover, the complexity of new-age platforms has been amplified with the advent of empowered edge that involves movement of applications and associated services closer to the end-user devices and also with the emergence of distributed cloud, wherein hyperscalers provide public cloud services at locations beyond their physical data centers. The perimeter of these platforms is ever expanding and thus, effectively employing a hybrid cloud strategy has become increasingly important to ensure that enterprises are able to reap the benefits of on-premises existence, cloud and edge locations, and to effectively utilize cloud native services provided by hyperscalers.
As a result of the pandemic, many organizations are migrating more and more services to the cloud. However, this is contributing to an increase in the stress, on the already stretched cloud budget. Putting control on cost structures is a fundamental aspect of an optimal hybrid cloud strategy. Organizations need to look at outcome-based consumption models that are aligned to business goals. Also, there are flexible commercial constructs in place that allow organizations to consume on-premises infrastructure in a pay-as-you-go model. Automation is another key component that not only aids in building and operating platforms at scale with minimum human intervention, but also plays a pivotal role in rapid disaster recovery to ensure continuity of mission critical operations across environments with a near-zero data loss.
