Shift to hybrid IT moving but still challenged by on-prem

Published on the 15/11/2016 | Written by Anthony Caruana


cloud datacentre

While the cloud gets all the attention, the reality is businesses simply can’t pick up all of their systems and shift them to a public or private cloud provider in one fell swoop…

Questions about security, challenges in moving applications to virtualised environments, and the need to re-jig budgets and operational teams mean hybrid environments are a more pragmatic solution.

A recent Harvard Business Review study, sponsored by Verizon Enterprise Solutions, found 63 percent of the 310 business and IT executives surveyed worldwide indicated they are pursuing a hybrid IT approach to keep up with their existing infrastructure. They also reported 59 percent of organisations found cloud computing improved their marketplace competitiveness.

One of the key challenges is integration – almost a third of companies said getting existing systems to operate seamlessly with cloud technology is a significant issue.

More than three-quarters of respondents said the ability to quickly add and remove resources was a significant benefit with 66 percent also reporting faster implementations.

Nearly all the respondents said application performance and reliability continue to be important, but meeting performance and reliability expectations is becoming more challenging. New applications and business processes depend on reliable, fast, and secure interaction between multiple private cloud, public cloud, and legacy systems. That kind of integration and interoperability requires new skills that aren’t traditionally found in legacy IT operations.

Given Verizon’s interest in pushing the benefits of cloud technology, it’s not surprising to find the survey packed with positive insight and statistics.

So, given all the benefits and opportunities, why are over a third of businesses not pursuing a hybrid IT approach or full cloud infrastructure?

The report found security, integration with other systems, and integrating multiple clouds to be major barriers. Inertia was also a factor with the continued value in on-premises, and in-house for the delivery for certain systems remaining as obstacles for companies contemplating a move to the cloud.

My observation is the market in Australia is making the shift to full cloud and hybrid IT infrastructure. A number of large data centre operators, such as Equinix, are setting up in Australia, and public cloud services such as Microsoft Azure, IBM SoftLayer and AWS all have local data centres so that issues of data sovereignty and network latency are addressed.

While enterprises are reasonably well served by network infrastructure, smaller businesses are feeling the pinch as their needs for fast connections are stymied as the NBN project slowly lurches forward.

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