What is hybrid cloud?

Hybrid cloud is a computing environment that uses a combination of on-premise, private cloud, and public cloud services to house an organization’s data and applications. 

Companies undergoing digital transformation are shifting the way they deploy infrastructure and applications to a hybrid cloud-based approach that both affords the company better agility and more effectively supports business priorities around the customer experience and competitive advantage. 

What are the business benefits of hybrid cloud?

The primary business benefit of a hybrid cloud is the business agility it provides, enabling an enterprise to adapt and change directions quickly by moving data and applications among on-premise, private and public cloud as required. It also enables seamless, secure orchestration and integration of workloads across multiple cloud landing zones. 

A hybrid cloud-based approach can play a critical role in helping organizations transition legacy applications, modernize core platforms and create an agile IT backbone that’s capable of supporting future workflows and processes.

What are some obstacles to implementing an effective hybrid cloud strategy?

Here are some key factors that hold back organizations from fully realizing the potential of their hybrid-cloud initiatives:

• Invisible walls. While most companies are engaged with digital transformation to some degree, many are inadequately resourced to deliver on those expectations, citing issues such as staffing, budgets and technology.
• Resources don’t support the forces. An improved customer experience, greater operational agility and a push for more innovation are key motivating forces behind many digital initiatives. These forces are compounded with a need to provide employees with more modern technologies and a supportive infrastructure.
  However, many enterprises struggle when addressing how to bridge the gap between what optimally should be done versus what can be done. The primary reason: lack of appropriate resources, such as technically skilled IT staff and proper tools and technology.
• Delivery delays. Organizations require specific functionality from their applications, which is why internal, custom-assembled solutions are the most common form of deployment. The time requirements for custom development and deployment can be burdensome. Many companies have strict requirements for testing or validation of production systems, limiting their business agility and impacting employees’ ability to leverage technology. This issue has led to the search for pre-built, configurable solutions across a variety of domains, such as the internet of things (IoT).
  Dependencies on legacy infrastructure and applications also hinder transition efforts, due to excessive energies applied to troubleshoot programs or errors, update user interfaces, and more quickly deploy new applications. These issues are compounded by departmental siloes in which people flounder to follow a single roadmap.
  The varied levels of department involvement in an initiative can lead to an isolated approach to application and infrastructure transformation. This isolation creates gaps, hampers end-to-end digitization and ultimately threatens business health.
• Lack of strategic business and technical partnerships. Some companies lack the technical skills, proper tools and advanced technologies to implement a hybrid cloud strategy. They also struggle to build partnerships to help fill those gaps with the right tools, technologies and talent. This is particularly apparent with healthcare and financial services companies due to their holistic approaches, which put higher demands on needed skills.