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HYBRID CLOUD, IN ITS TRUEST DEFINITION, IS A MIX OF DISPARATE PUBLIC and private cloud services and architecture that uses orchestration so that applications and data can be shared. The technology in particular is a path to digital transformation because hybrid cloud can scale on demand, unlike private clouds, and be customized, unlike public cloud. This gives IT the ability to create a platform that is differentiated based on the needs of the business.
“When someone chooses public cloud, the way they use it is no different than the next company,” explains John Fruehe, an independent enterprise technology analyst based in Austin. “With hybrid cloud you can change or morph an application to meet specific business needs.”
Building the right hybrid cloud takes planning and work as well as the right partners and staffers. The most successful IT people also know that there is no one-size-fits-all cloud. Experts suggest starting preliminary work on a hybrid cloud by examining the full scope of existing cloud-based resources and taking inventory of any data resources that will be part of the hybrid environment. Security should be top of mind, and processes need to be in place to ensure that any security policy created can be rolled out and applied to the entire cloud footprint. Backup and recovery are also crucial since most cloud providers—while highly secure—do not take ownership of these processes.
It might all seem daunting, but a growing number of vendors, consultants, and firms can help with these and other tasks, such as choosing the right cloud building blocks, migrating data, and ensuring that orchestration is in place. Third parties can also help IT evaluate some of the newer technologies that will shape hybrid cloud usage in 2018, like containers, advanced artificial intelligence, and machine learning, helping IT become what Torsten Volk, managing research director for hybrid cloud and infrastructure management at research firm Enterprise Management Associates, calls “digital attackers.”
“Today,” he says, “IT is all about becoming a digital attacker that shows three key properties: deploying new capabilities before the competition rolls them out, creating apps as a combination of canned microservices that you can chain together via API calls from multiple clouds, and trying out and quantifying the business value of new capabilities without much risk.” Hybrid cloud enables all three.