Hybrid Databases Rearrange the Data Deck
We’ve reached the point where hybrid cloud arrangements have become commonplace in enterprises, and with this trend come implications for databases and data management. Hybrid cloud scenarios are now seen at a majority of enterprises, according to a survey of 229 data managers and professionals, conducted by Information Today, Inc. in partnership with Oracle. A majority, 54%, are working with hybrid cloud environments, compared to 40% exclusively with private cloud settings (“The New Data Management Landscape: 2018 IOUG Special Report on Data Management Trends”).
“Most commonly, now companies have a cloud-first strategy, in which all new applications should go to the cloud,” said Caio Milani, general manager of the cloud group at MarkLogic. “This means that most companies are moving to the cloud but not all legacy systems [can move] at once, which leads to a hybrid environment while they make this move.”
Hybrid clouds—which match the power and flexibility of public clouds with the security and local control of private clouds or on-premise systems—have become “the most popular form of deployment for new and re-deployed applications,” said Diane Clay, senior product marketing manager of cloud solutions and services for Hitachi Vantara. “Hybrid should be part of the cloud strategy and cloud roadmap for any decent-sized enterprise,” added Sash Sunkara, CEO and co-founder of RackWare.
However, there is also confusion in the market—enterprises may not recognize their implementations as hybrid clouds, said Ken Rugg, chief product and strategy officer at EnterpriseDB. “Nearly all enterprises of any size now use both public and private clouds of some sort,” he pointed out. Multi-cloud, or using multiple public cloud providers simultaneously, is in vogue, but may also defy standardized definitions.
It boils down to the fact that enterprises are no longer relying on one single platform or computer resource, explained Larry Socher, managing director and offerings lead of intelligent cloud and infrastructure at Accenture. “We have very few clients with 100% of their workloads on a public cloud,” he noted. “Most of our clients are adopting a multi-cloud strategy, which includes multiple SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS public providers with hybrid application and data placement across public and private cloud.”
The rise of both hybrid and multi-cloud platforms means data needs to be managed in new ways, industry experts point out. There are lingering questions about which data should go into the cloud, and which should stay on-premise.
“This depends on the organization itself,” said Wise. “All data can be housed in the cloud. Some businesses worry about data privacy, security, or regulatory compliance. Cloud vendors build their platforms ensuring these concerns are addressed, whereas on-premise environments cannot always ensure that is the case. Organizations need to evaluate costs and levels of managed services in order to determine what works best in the cloud versus on-premise.”
Often, too much attention is paid to the application, and not enough to the data. “When organizations plan where to run their workloads—whether on a public cloud provider, on-prem, migrated to a third-party software service, or some combination thereof—the focus is often on the application itself,” said Gordon Haff, technology evangelist at Red Hat. “The more critical question frequently relates to the data the application uses.”
There’s a need to let data stay where it is as hybrid clouds develop. “The most efficient way to manage a hybrid data infrastructure is to leave the data where it naturally belongs, moving data processing and analysis to the data, rather than the other way around,” said Emma McGrattan, senior vice president of engineering at Actian. “This avoids unnecessary data duplication, simplifies data governance, and is cost-effective from a data storage, data transfer, and data management perspective.
