As companies of all shapes and sizes know by now, the new normal has highlighted the need for cloud-enabled strategies. With hybrid work models becoming mainstream, the lines between the physical and virtual worlds are swiftly disappearing, requiring enterprises to embrace cloud innovations to ensure a better and more connected experience for all.
According to the IDC Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Tracker, the global public cloud services market which comprises Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), has grossed $312 billion in 2020. It also projected that the global public cloud services market will reach $832 billion by 2025, with a CAGR of 17.5 percent. Subsequently, a separate study by the research firm revealed that spending on private cloud is expected to reach $5 billion this year. In the Middle East, major cloud players such as IBM have also made significant strides to support governments and private organisations in their cloud ambitions, bringing them advantages such as security, enterprise scalability and open innovation.
Based on an organisation’s IT requirements and digitalisation objectives, they can choose to either deploy a private or public cloud. The public cloud gives enterprises the flexibility to scale up or down without worrying about capital expenditures (CAPEX), licensing limitations and lack of in-house skills. On the other hand, the private cloud offers enterprises with complete control over the data, enhanced flexibility and ensures security and compliance.
However, each cloud model also has its own drawbacks. For one, while the private cloud approach offers a higher level of privacy, it often requires costly staffing and maintenance investments. Conversely, while a public cloud is flexible and convenient, it may lack the security controls for sensitive data.
Today, with users increasingly gaining cloud maturity, many are embracing a hybrid cloud approach.
Hybrid cloud brings together the best of both public and private clouds. It allows organisations to choose which aspects of their business they want in each environment, enabling them to take advantage of all the benefits.
If you’re looking to jumpstart your hybrid cloud journey but don’t know where to begin, here are top tips to help you succeed:
- Determine your goals
It’s good to start with the basics. Having a clear set of objectives and priorities will ensure that you make the best hybrid architecture decisions for your business. You need to determine what you want to achieve from the move to hybrid cloud, whether it is to reduce costs or accelerate business transformation, increase operational agility and so on. By answering these questions you can determine the best hybrid cloud strategy to achieve your goals.
- Assess your current workloads
In order to build a strong foundation for your hybrid cloud environment, it is vital to first evaluate your current workloads and application requirements. This will help you determine which workloads will fit best in each environment.
For example, some regulatory measures may require you to keep certain data locally. Therefore, workloads with this data will need to remain on-premises.
- Take it one step at a time
Start your migration in phases. The journey to hybrid cloud does not happen overnight.
It is ideal to choose one or two non-critical workloads as pilot projects to understand the challenges and costs that the migration process will entail. Once you have a better idea of the measures that the shift requires, you can then customise and optimise your migration strategies.
- Choose the right implementation partner
Look for a hybrid cloud implementation partner that brings extensive cloud experience and robust global and local expertise to the table. The shift to hybrid cloud is not a race, it’s a journey. Therefore, it is pertinent that you find a partner that you can trust every step of the way as you reach your hybrid cloud goals.
- Ensure orchestration interoperability
The lack of effective orchestration between on-premises and public cloud systems can result in latency, security issues and loss of connectivity between various applications and data sources. To avoid this, it is important to orchestrate interoperability between environments while ensuring that they are properly configured to enable the seamless performance of your data and apps in the hybrid cloud.
- Plan for security
As with every IT endeavour, security is crucial. It is pertinent to implement security at every stage of your hybrid cloud adoption. You should ensure to integrate the proper security tools and protocols across mixed environments. It is also ideal to adopt DevSecOps to ensure a holistic and long-term security for your apps and data in the hybrid cloud.
Hybrid cloud offers a gamut of benefits to enterprises today, especially as businesses themselves increasingly embrace a hybrid approach. However, it is important to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all cloud solution and every implementation will have its own sets of benefits and challenges. That’s why it would be wise to consider all aspects of the business before embracing the cloud whether it be public, private or hybrid.
