More than ever, agility is a key component of enterprise success. For many organizations, adopting a hybrid cloud strategy is a critical step to achieving that agility.
Unlike going fully into the public cloud, which can lock you into the whims and models of the providers, or relying solely on on-premises solutions, which can easily become expensive to build and maintain, the hybrid cloud offers organizations more freedom to work and invest as they seem fit.
What makes up a hybrid cloud strategy?
1. Governance and security control
Many organizations work in industries that require strict control of governance and security, whether it’s access to data or work on sensitive products (e.g., government, healthcare, financial, etc.). A hybrid cloud approach allows for stricter control with the ability to leverage the cloud as needed.
2. Financial flexibility
Taking a hybrid cloud approach allows organizations to assign investment as capex and/or opex. This provides them with greater flexibility in their investments and expenditures and makes it easier for them to scale internally as needs arise.
3. Expanded toolsets
Cloud providers are routinely offering new tools to entice customers and help organizations improve their productivity.
Amazon, for example, has created a recon technology that makes it possible to rapidly identify objects in photos—a technology most organizations are unable to afford or implement on their own.
These tools for high-intensity workloads open up new possibilities for analytics, as well as deeper insights that can be used to deliver new products and services.
4. Scalability
Datacenters can only do so much before they become an economic liability. During times of peak growth, the hybrid cloud allows organizations to scale and provision on-demand to meet their needs without a major overhaul of their development process.
5. Hardware familiarity
Most organizations have heavily invested in hardware and are timid about scrapping that investment for a full-on move to the cloud. Hybrid clouds offer the best of both worlds: the hardware an organization already has coupled with the power of the cloud.
How to develop a hybrid cloud strategy
If your organization is looking to transition to the hybrid cloud, the most effective way to get started is to develop a roadmap.
The first step of this process is to understand the data you have access to, along with the types of work that need to be done on that data.
Understanding what you have and what you want to do will then help you chart out where different types of data should be stored. Sensitive data, for instance, will likely need to remain on-premises, whereas anonymized and most unstructured data will benefit from behind housed in the cloud.
Lastly, take a thorough inventory of the applications your teams rely upon on a daily basis, then investigate which applications would be more effective when modernized for the cloud.
While not every application will make the list, those that can make the move off-premises can provide greater flexibility and accelerated workloads for your developers.
Learn more about what it takes to manage and scale your data in the hybrid cloud. Download our free eBook, A Guide to Managing and Scaling Your Unstructured Data in a Hybrid Cloud.
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