Hybrid Cloud Is the New Normal
Hybrid cloud is here to stay.
The future will not roll back to in-house everything. Companies moving forward will need to embrace the cloud in a big way to stay in the game. Startups built in the cloud are dominating many areas because the cloud adds versatility to an organisation’s arsenal.
Hybrid, however, is a nebulous term by definition. Each organisation will approach it differently. 85% of organisations already have a hybrid cloud strategy in place, which is great. Hybrid cloud makes it easier to worry less and innovate more. You’ll have the resources you need at the tips of your fingers.
But you have to maximize your resources.
Hybrid cloud reaches its full potential when you maximize resources. Consider your resources as what you have now or could get in the future. If you have ageing hardware, switching to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is an example. This would help you to reduce your costs while providing high-quality hardware.
Hybrid cloud needs to be met with a creative mind and innovative approach to yield the biggest rewards. But it’s good to consider a few guidelines before rushing off into the great hybrid unknown.
- Know why you’re putting your workloads where.
With great flexibility comes great responsibility (to decide what to do with workloads). This shouldn’t be something that happens by accident. You should consider the reasons you’re running one workload in the cloud and another on-prem. For some organisations, this will be decided largely by compliance issues. For others, it will be a matter of performance, accessibility, or more.
- Downsize as appropriate.
One of the great things about using the cloud is that you don’t have to manage it. You don’t need employees to manage a data centre when you’re outsourcing that work to a third-party provider. Not only does that free up your IT staff to do higher-level stuff, but it also frees up your budget. On average, organisations that have adopted hybrid cloud have reduced IT costs by 24%.
- Embrace automation.
Automation is like magic of the tech world. Automation relieves your staff from repetitive time-consuming tasks. Not only that, but it reduces the chance for errors, saving time, money, and frustration.
- Keep an eye on your cloud usage.
The cloud is a great way to reduce costs. But it can be very easy to end up paying for cloud allocated to you that you’re not using. The beauty of the cloud is that it can scale as you need it to. Unlike traditional hosting, where you must invest in a set amount of capacity whether you’ll use it or not, the cloud allows you to spin up a server in a few moments. But it’s important to keep track so you’re also deleting that server when you don’t need it anymore.
- Reduce complexity.
Where hybrid cloud can go all wrong is when you introduce the cloud in a way that creates a silo. Sometimes it might be necessary for compliance reasons. The aim should be to create an environment where data and workloads can be shared across your hosting options. It increases flexibility while decreasing the amount that needs to be managed. It’s good practice to keep an eye on how to reduce complexity in every decision that’s made.
Hybrid cloud is what you make it.
Hybrid cloud can be a revelation that streamlines workflows, reduces capital expenditures, and increases collaboration and accessibility. Or it can be another siloed element that IT staff needs to manage with everything else.
The hybrid cloud can be effective and cost-efficient, but only if you build it with those things in mind. The cloud is an opportunity to introduce flexibility that traditional hosting alone never could. It is changing the way that organisations use and consume technology.
If you’re ready to start your hybrid cloud migration, contact us today.