Organisations of all sizes and markets have recognised that innovation is not driven by complex IT infrastructure but in getting new products and services in a more agile manner to the market. And, hybrid cloud offers that.
By Anantharaman Balakrishnan
The Hybrid Cloud is one of the primary realities of today’s IT. It offers a more holistic approach where public cloud, private cloud and dedicated servers (including virtualization) are combined, working together as one platform to minimize trade-offs and get the maximum value and effectiveness of each component of a workload.
Over the last several years, we have been talking about the cloud and we have also observed significant adoption by customers in India. Today, 65% of large enterprises are making use of cloud technology, services and solutions as part of their IT infrastructure. One of the latest reports by Gartner says that the Indian public cloud market alone is poised to treble to $1.9 billion (about Rs 12,000 crore) by 2018. Cloud services’ revenue is projected to have a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.2% from 2012 through 2017 across all segments of the cloud computing market.
Clearly organizations of all sizes and markets have recognized that innovation is not driven by complex IT infrastructure but in getting new products and services in a more agile manner to the market. Business leaders and IT departments increasingly are using the cloud to deploy new services or fulfil new business models. These services and business models were not visualized in the past or may have been more expensive or time-consuming to implement in the traditional on-premises IT model. The Hybrid cloud helps in merging the advantages of both; public cloud which is provided by a third-party and shared among multiple users as well as private cloud which is generally a company’s investment in a virtualized private infrastructure.
With the Hybrid Cloud, businesses can place their secure customer data on a dedicated server, and combine the high performance and scalability of the cloud to allow them to conduct business and transact payments online all within one seamless, agile and secure environment. By leveraging the benefits of the Hybrid Cloud enterprises can reduce overall total cost of ownership and improve cost efficiency, by more closely matching one’s cost pattern to one’s revenue/demand pattern – and in the process move one’s business from a capital-intensive cost model to an opex-based one. A recent report by IDG Research Services commissioned by EMC demonstrates the close connections between hybrid cloud computing and digital business. The report pegs hybrid cloud as the “great enabler of digital business”, but it’s more than a proven enabler. Hybrid cloud can accelerate progress and amplify the benefits of digital business initiatives. There’s a benefits “multiplier effect” when companies put more workloads in hybrid cloud and put the agility of hybrid cloud to work.
It probably goes without saying that digital business is high on corporate agendas and, therefore, high on the agendas of CIOs and IT organizations. Consumer technologies and the Internet have forever altered the expectations of consumers and commercial customers. People and organizations expect to do business in a manner which is more easier, quicker ,anytime and anywhere. To remain competitive, companies must further digitize their processes and interactions – and deliver engaging customer centric experiences.
How does the hybrid cloud play a role? It’s today’s best infrastructure for digital business. It has the necessary underlying characteristics for keeping pace in a fast-changing digital economy: speed, flexibility, reliability, scalability, cost effectiveness. And it enables digital business in specific ways. Hybrid cloud supports rapid testing, deploying, and scaling of new applications by enabling businesses to leverage public and private cloud applications and services together seamlessly. New mobile apps can integrate with core systems so a company can bring all of its capabilities into play.
But the hybrid cloud value proposition goes further. The IDG survey showed that hybrid cloud adoption reduces IT operating expenses by a remarkable 24% on average. That’s a big number, both as direct savings and as opportunity to reinvest. But the real kicker is that the surveyed companies put around 40% of their savings into new business and technology initiatives.
Then there’s the multiplier effect. The more aggressive adopters – those with a significant number of workloads in hybrid cloud – enjoy the biggest gains. They are three times more likely to be achieving their digital business goals and achieving infrastructure readiness than non-adopters. Their IT operating expense reduction increases to a whopping 29%. This translates into an even greater opportunity to reinvest savings. The Hybrid cloud is, indeed, the great enabler.
The author is Country Head, EMC Global Services India at EMC. Views are personal.