Massive innovations in technology are rapidly shifting the current business landscape. Products and services that were once seen as unnecessary luxuries are now quickly becoming vital to a company’s operation. The cloud can most definitely be counted within these services, especially in the world of IT.
We’ve previously discussed the wonders of the hybrid cloud and managed services and what they can bring to your business, but the cloud is so much more than infrastructure. IT resources can leverage a hybrid cloud set up in order to receive similar benefits in what industry experts are calling hybrid IT.
“By 2020, 78 % of businesses will have integrated cloud computing.”
Bringing the benefits of hybrid cloud to IT resources
The cloud is a huge part of modern business, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Forbes contributor Louis Columbus stated that by 2020, 78 percent of businesses will have integrated cloud computing into their current business model. That’s a huge jump from the 37 percent that have adopted cloud managed services today, and this massive increase just goes to show the high demand cloud services have in the business world.
So, with this predicted success of the overall market in mind, the question still remains: What is hybrid IT?
To understand the answer to this question, the demands of IT organizations must first be fleshed out. These companies have set up their business model around the fact that their clients require IT resources such as the development and testing of mission-critical applications.
As the technology developed, cloud storage services began to be more economical and efficient than internal deployment on the part of the client. And so, cloud-based IT managed services was born.
However, there was a problem with this that needed to be fixed. Many IT organizations leveraged public cloud infrastructure in order to meet the needs of their clients. This works just fine for applications and data that are business-critical. That being said, problems began to arise when sensitive information needed to be hosted on the cloud.
As we discussed in our earlier article on public and private clouds, the public cloud has some security concerns. Due to the fact that you’re sharing a public cloud infrastructure with other clients, the data contained on these clouds simply isn’t as safe as those within an on-site, private cloud. On the flip side of this, private cloud infrastructures are very safe, but they’re also a lot more expensive to set up and implement.
Utilizing hybrid cloud managed services is the answer
So what do you do when you need the security of the private cloud but don’t want to pay for the entirety of your IT resources to be implemented on one? You have your cake and eat it too, of course.
Have your public cloud and secure your applications, too!As managing vice president of Gartner Chris Howard said on the subject, “The cloud will simply become one of the ways that we ‘do’ computing, and workloads will move around in hybrid internal/external IT environments.” Basically, IT organizations are beginning to see that certain client applications simply can’t be hosted on the public cloud and have decided to implement a hybrid cloud solution.
The hybrid cloud combines the security of mission-critical IT applications in a private cloud infrastructure with the cost-effectiveness of a public cloud for data that isn’t business-critical. Hybrid IT is a revolutionary new concept and it’s sweeping enterprise IT right now, as providers like ISG Technology help IT organizations implement these solutions.
Next time, we’ll discuss the use cases of hybrid IT as well as its applications that span multiple industries and business models.