Dimension Data expert: Hybrid cloud key to managing complexity
Mechelle Buys Du Plessis, Managing Director UAE, Dimension Data, explains why more organisations adopting a multi-cloud approach and why

Dimension Data expert: Hybrid cloud key to managing complexity

Mechelle Buys Du Plessis, Managing Director UAE, Dimension Data, tells us why more organisations adopting a multi-cloud approach and why:

According to Gartner, by 2020, a no-cloud policy will be as rare as a no-internet policy is today. Cloud-first, and even cloud-only, is replacing the no-cloud stance that has dominated many large vendors in recent years.

Cloud will increasingly be the default option for software deployment. This does not mean that everything will be cloud-based, and this concern will remain valid in some cases. However, the extreme position of having nothing cloud-based will largely disappear. Hybrid will be the most common usage of the cloud and will require public cloud to be part of the overall strategy.

Gartner also points out that by 2019, more than 30% of the 100 largest vendors’ new software investments will have shifted from cloud-first to cloud-only. The now well-established stance of cloud-first in software design and planning is gradually being augmented or replaced by cloud-only. This also applies to private and hybrid cloud scenarios. This inevitable shift to the cloud will also influence IT departments to accept the need to continuously innovate and change and align with lines of business.

Over the last few years, businesses and IT departments have invested in multi-cloud environments, both public and private as well as from different vendors. While there are associated gains from such a cloud-first approach, this has created management complexity and workload spill-overs. These are increasingly becoming significant and demanding a longer-term approach towards a hybrid cloud strategy with the full portfolio of development tools and service level agreements.

Since the initial hype about public cloud a few years ago, there has been a realistic awakening amongst businesses about the true value and the true cost of moving to the cloud. While the initial expectation was about reducing the cost of IT operations, by increasingly moving them to a cloud platform, this simplistic expectation has proved elusive since then. The cost of managing public cloud IT operations has become more expensive than any of the previous expectations.

One of the reasons is that the skill sets for driving adoption of public cloud platforms needs to be built up in addition to maintaining the skill sets for managing traditional IT operations. So, while the cost of legacy operations has remained constant the cost of adding skills to manage public cloud operations have been growing.

In the coming months, IT departments will review their investments made in first generation public cloud and evaluate their return on investments from operational expenditures. Increasingly IT departments are assessing the benefits of spending the same amounts on private clouds and this approach is gaining traction in market segments with high value transactional data. Service providers that can help organisations build their private clouds while driving business agility and managing their costs, will increasingly become in-demand.

Also, ahead, cloud solution providers will begin to find ways to differentiate themselves by increasing their vertical focus and specialising into deep verticals and related compliance through their hybrid cloud offerings. These hybrid cloud solutions will become increasingly available across the entire Xaas stack for various vertical market segments. These broad based Xaas solutions will further help IT departments to build and scale their private cloud solutions within their vertical market segments.

As the usage of hybrid cloud solutions increases within a business, the IT department will be increasingly pressured to ensure standardisation of services for both internal and external customers. This will drive IT departments to invest in hybrid cloud solutions and service providers that facilitate creation and management of standardised services over other solution and service providers.

 

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