It’s no secret that today’s private and public cloud infrastructures can enhance and complement on-premises enterprise networks. Working in the cloud is an experience that customers increasingly expect to have wherever their workloads live.
A hybrid cloud offers a way to architect and operate IT that takes advantage of cloud capabilities, cost, performance, and agility available on premises, on public and private clouds, and at edge locations. A hybrid cloud is not simply using a public or private cloud for workloads. It is cloud everywhere.
Hybrid clouds provide flexibility by driving greater efficiency and superior collaboration, enhancing security, and making it easier to scale operations. While hybrid clouds offer a variety of benefits, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all hybrid cloud.
But many organizations have stumbled into hybrid cloud arrangements by accident. The pandemic, for example, caused many enterprises to adopt hybrid cloud options without fully exploring the implications. This created a big gap in the digital operating model for most enterprises. They moved communications, data management, and business process operations to the cloud, and added unexpected and unnecessary costs. So for many enterprises, the cloud is not cheaper and has not eliminated redundancy, management of existing data centers, or support for legacy apps.
Accidental Clouds Are Inefficient and Expensive
One of the major drawbacks of a hybrid-cloud-by-accident approach is that it creates interoperability issues. In a hybrid cloud configuration, different systems and technologies will live in different places, for different reasons. But these systems must all work together as a single, reliable, and efficient network. Often, network elements that were added in an ad-hoc manner don’t work well together, creating headaches for the IT team at the hardware and software level.
From a business operations perspective, ensuring business information and data are flowing where they need to when they need to and that everyone has access to everything they need is very difficult when key network hardware and software are not optimized to work together. When the cloud is not operating at peak efficiency, team members become reliant on tribal knowledge, where only certain team members have access to crucial information, which slows down processes and increases the risk that critical information will get lost or missed.
Hybrid clouds that have been created by accident can be costly, as some operations are very expensive to run in the cloud. And some cloud configurations can also be more difficult to secure, which can be problematic for organizations like hospitals or governments which have strict regulations around sensitive information.
Optimization Is Efficiently Achieved by Design
A hybrid-cloud-by-design strategy avoids all the pitfalls of a hybrid-cloud-by-accident approach.
The advantage of a by-design approach for organizations who are considering a hybrid cloud, or re-examining the architecture of their current cloud, is that network architects and tech manufacturers have a fulsome understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of different hybrid cloud structures and hosts. With more knowledge, enterprises can create ordered, structured, and strategic approaches to integrating cloud technologies. This is crucial, because many technologies can be run either on-premises or in a public or private cloud, but there are pros and cons that must be considered with each choice.
For example, artificial intelligence is making a splash in many different industries, and companies can integrate AI both on-premises and in the cloud. Cloud-based AI solutions can leverage huge volumes of data, at a cost, while on-premises solutions are often more cost-efficient but may have smaller data pools to work with.
A strategic approach to the cloud is also crucial to enabling effective interoperability and some of the most value-based applications that emerge from it. One of the clearest examples is the advantages that come from having a single-pane-of-glass view of the entire infrastructure. This includes having the ability to monitor and move workloads, enabling accurate and effective charging back of time to clients and simplifying access to data.
But without a coherent structure for the hybrid cloud designed ahead of time, achieving a single-pane-of-glass view and all the benefits a hybrid cloud offers is, at best, difficult and more likely impossible.
A Flexible and Knowledgeable Approach Needs a Flexible, Knowledgeable Partner
When it comes to enterprise IT solutions, you can’t take anything for granted. Which is why the word ‘proven’ is at the top of our list of criteria and why we partner with only best-in-class, global IT solution providers like Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).
Our expertise is in the architecting and implementation of secure enterprise IT solutions and IT consulting. That said, contrary to popular belief, it’s not just about the products. It’s about the right enterprise infrastructure solution that best fits your needs on every level, like a hybrid cloud solution.
That’s why it’s also very important to choose a partner who will work with you to ensure your hybrid cloud solution meets all your needs. This applies to both the technology you’ll need and the network architecture that will enable it. By choosing a partner that takes a holistic approach to your hybrid cloud solution, you can ensure you are optimizing your use of in-cloud and on-premises elements, and that best-of-breed technologies are effectively integrated into your overall network architecture.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Brings Best-of-Breed Solutions
We’re proud to partner with HPE, which provides best-of-breed hybrid cloud solutions for any industry vertical requirement. HPE has deep experience with hybrid cloud technologies, and provides all the necessary infrastructure elements, including servers, storage, and networking, to support an effective hybrid-cloud-by-design strategy.
HPE’s GreenLake portfolio of private and hybrid cloud (IaaS, SaaS) and flexible as-a-service solutions deliver the optimal cloud experience wherever apps and data live. With HPE GreenLake, organizations can simplify and accelerate the development, delivery, and management of cloud-native and their own IT services through an open, secure, AI-enabled, self-service edge-to-cloud platform.
HPE GreenLake is particularly suited to meet edge, security, compliance, data sovereignty, and multi-generational IT needs. The HPE GreenLake platform enables multi-vendor, hybrid multi-cloud visibility and management. Customers can consume the services on a pay-per-use or subscription basis, with flexibility in when and how payments are made.
Learn more about HPE’s best-of-breed offerings, like its GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform here, and reach out to us if you have any questions about how to set up your ideal hybrid cloud solution.