In today’s volatile and unpredictable environment, every organisation is now searching for a cost-effective and flexible model of cloud deployment that also delivers next-generation security, control, and performance. We hear a lot about hybrid cloud in the marketplace, but what makes this model so popular today?
With the effects of Covid-19, many organisations have rushed to pursue a cloud-first approach, and may be realising this has its issues when it comes to costs, control, and compliance. At the same time, they know that while private or on-premise cloud offers greater control, it lacks the high availability of data and scalability that public cloud offers.
To find out why hybrid cloud is now considered the infrastructure model of choice, we spoke to Peter Young, TSG General Manager.
What are the technology priorities for organisations in 2020?
Organisations need to be able to respond quickly to changing requirements, particularly with the ongoing effects Covid-19 may be having on their operations and their customers. At the same time, in this current economic environment they need to maintain cost predictability, while having the ability to scale their infrastructure capacity up or down in the future without any risk.
What they really need is an infrastructure model that enables them to pick between public, private or hybrid cloud deployments with ease. This will depend on the business requirements, the applications that need to be used and the amount of data volume the business wants to load on each cloud.
At present, they might not be sure which platform to choose, so we partner with them to understand their current needs and future requirements from a hybrid cloud platform.
Currently, we’re seeing a lot of businesses with a remote workforce as a result of Covid-19, so they’ll likely need more public cloud services delivered than normal, because they’ll otherwise be waiting too long for the right equipment to arrive.
They’ll also likely be revisiting rushed or non-tolerant remote access platforms that are now mission critical. These platforms may have originally been designed for 5% of users and been deemed non-critical but are now being used by 95% of users and are deemed critical.
What are the challenges of having every workload in private cloud?
We know that having all your workloads in a private cloud creates a range of challenges, chief of which is the inability to scale up or down. This reduces a company’s ability to grow and drive revenue through higher productivity and adapt to changing business requirements with more of the workforce remote. Your private cloud really needs to be designed for high volume workloads and peak demand, otherwise scalability and reliability issues can arise.
There’s also all the ongoing maintenance, management, upgrades, and troubleshooting that needs to be managed in-house, and this all requires a higher staff overhead, on top of a larger investment upfront in hardware. Your mobile and remote users may also find a private cloud less accessible.
What are the challenges of heading to public cloud first for every workload?
Conversely, we know that having everything in the public cloud can mean being locked into using a single vendor, which results in higher costs. And some applications that perhaps aren’t suited for the public cloud are far more expensive and may run slower.
We often see organisations revisiting their rushed public cloud migrations that were lift and shifted. Hybrid cloud allows these solutions to be re-architected to reduce cost or improve resilience.
There are also a lot of regulatory compliance and control considerations with the public cloud. Some regulations require sensitive datasets to reside in the same country, for example. And the costs of security for certain workloads and datasets in the cloud can also be prohibitive.
At the same time, not being in the cloud at all – public or private – means your organisation has a handbrake on innovation. Your ability to grow is stifled, and you may find that many enterprise applications and systems are now only offered in the cloud – such as Salesforce for example.
What are the key benefits of having a hybrid cloud environment?
Hybrid cloud enables you to get the best of both worlds.
From public cloud, organisations can get the cost-effective scalability they need for new business demands. With predictable costs, they can access best-practice modern architectures with high reliability and service level agreements (SLAs). This is ideal for workloads such as web services or those workloads that may be cyclical and need to scale up and down rapidly.
From private cloud, organisations can retain control over their business-critical workloads that are more data intensive and require higher performance for end users. These are the predictable year-round workloads that don’t need to scale up or down in short timeframes.
By combining the two in an effective hybrid cloud model, organisations benefit from lower overall costs, enhanced security layers that reduce risk, and more flexible policy-based deployments and distribution of resources between private and public cloud platforms.
What value does Lexel offer organisations who want to adopt hybrid cloud?
While hybrid cloud is certainly a worthwhile model to adopt, the increased complexity makes the overall environment harder to maintain and secure. We enable organisations to combine public and private cloud into a seamless blend of infrastructure.
By adding traditional on-premise IT into the mix, we create a full hybrid IT model that enables organisations to take advantage of public cloud pricing, the flexibility of cloud computing overall, as well as the secure control of dedicated hardware.
Because the cloud presents an overwhelming range of benefits and risks to businesses, our extensive range of cloud services and solutions delivers peace of mind for your cloud journey.
Our team have a wealth of experience in implementing cloud solutions to global best practice standards, and we know cloud inside out. We’ll recommend solutions and services that deliver best value to your organisation, both now and in the future. Lexel can help businesses with the lack of knowledge and expertise in the market to optimise their hybrid cloud platform, and this can yield better results.
Contact Lexel today to discuss your business challenges and where we can help you discover greater agility and control in your Hybrid IT environment. We work with our customers to see the big picture, so you’ll have the added advantage of clearly understanding the benefits and the risks associated with moving workloads to hybrid cloud. Through our partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), we can bring you the world-leading hardware and platforms that will underpin your successful journey to hybrid cloud.