By Aaron White, Regional Director, Middle East at Nutanix

The Future is Hybrid Cloud

Aaron White

As enterprises demand stronger application mobility and interoperability, they are increasingly choosing hybrid cloud infrastructure (the combined use of private and public clouds with some degree of integration between the two cloud environments). While the advent of public cloud has increased IT efficiency in certain areas, hybrid cloud capabilities are the next step in providing the freedom to dynamically provision and manage applications based on business needs.

As per findings of Nutanix’s first annual global Enterprise Cloud Index^[1], measuring enterprise plans for adopting private, hybrid and public clouds, enterprises plan to increase hybrid cloud usage, with 91% stating hybrid cloud as the ideal IT model, but only 18% stating they have that model today. The findings also revealed that application mobility across any cloud is a top priority for 97% of respondents – with 88% of respondents saying it would “solve a lot of my problems.” Additionally, the report found public cloud is not a panacea; IT decision makers ranked matching applications to the right cloud environment as a critical capability, and 35% of organizations using public clouds overspent their annual budget. When asked to rank the primary benefits of hybrid cloud, interoperability between cloud types (23%) and the ability to move applications back and forth between clouds (16%) outranked cost (6%) and security (5%) as the primary benefits.

White enterprises are turning to hybrid cloud to modernize IT for the digital era, given the significant complexity that still exists today in cross-cloud management and integration, many enterprises are struggling to create an effective hybrid cloud strategy.

Below are 5 tips that will provide guidelines to regional enterprises considering the move to a hybrid cloud model:

1. A SINGLE INFRASTRUCTURE OR BIMODAL IT?

Supporting mode 1 (traditional) and 2 (next-gen) applications with separate infrastructure is called bimodal IT—and it’s a limiting, impractical process. Your hybrid cloud needs to support both seamlessly for a more agile infrastructure

2. DON’T OVERLOOK DEVELOPMENT AND TEST RESOURCES

Be sure to include all IT resources dedicated to development work, including tools, repositories, build servers, and so on

3. DON’T CHOOSE CLOUD PROVIDERS TOO SOON

Before you start thinking about a cloud provider, make a complete list of the environments you’ll need to give you an idea of what you’re doing on-prem. Remember, this is a 3-5 year commitment at least, so no rush!

4. RECONCILING IT IDEALS AND REALITY

Enterprise IT is rarely perfect, but you can still optimize it with a tactical, practical cloud management approach. As you work toward implementing hybrid cloud, keep the lights on in your current environment.

5. NEW TO DEVOPS? TIME TO GET FAMILIAR

As an enterprise, gaining a competitive advantage is a business necessity. To stay ahead of the curve, many enterprises from varying industries are getting serious about DevOps.

In conclusion, reliance on legacy datacentre architectures—whether you own the equipment and software or not—or getting locked into a specific infrastructure stack can add to technical debt, increase operating costs, and limit future flexibility. This is becoming a thing of the past. Hybrid cloud is the future. Hybrid cloud capabilities constitute a growing necessity in the dynamic, digital business climate, in which enterprises demand the freedom to dynamically provision and manage applications based on business needs. Reaching this ideal IT operating model will require more comprehensive hybrid vendor solutions, as well as greater expertise in designing, building, and operating hybrid clouds.