Pressure has never been higher on organisations to develop an agile business, in the face of rapidly changing economic, social and political scenarios. With new tooling and remote working, many organisations are looking for ‘quick fixes’ to automate core IT operations, scale at speed and manage costs – and where Australia’s cloud spend is tipped to hit $25 billion AUD per year by 2025, the time is right to understand what the best future-proofed strategy will be.
Alas, not everything belongs in the public cloud. And – with the advanced nature of cloud tooling – not everything needs to stay on-premise either which is why demand is rising for Hybrid Cloud optimisation. Hybrid Cloud offers the benefits of both on-premises, public and private clouds allowing organisations to enable new cloud technologies, while extending the lifespan of expensive on premise IT infrastructure which often house core applications and data that cannot , or that you don’t want to migrate.
So, how can you tell if a Hybrid Cloud approach (by design) is best for your organisation?
If you resonate with any of the use cases below, then Hybrid Cloud is right for you.
Low latency is a priority:
If speed is the issue, then a Hybrid Cloud approach will cover all of your requirements by allowing you to enable an on-premise and private cloud solution to speed up access to an application or data. Network latency can be an issue if the users are located at a significant distance from the closest public cloud provider – therefore a private cloud with high-speed networking access can provide superior latency across many regions.
Data sovereignty and in-country data governance is regulated:
For certain kinds of data, or data that works with Australian government organisations, it often may be required to be hosted in-country and not transferred off-shore through public cloud providers. This may necessitate the use of public clouds and on-premise infrastructure solutions for workloads and storage of sensitive data. A well designed Hybrid Cloud architecture will mean different workloads within the same application can be split between cloud and on-premises, therefore able to meet legal, governmental or regulatory requirements.
Release of new services or pilot workloads:
When an organisation is launching a new service, feature or application – especially if it is in ‘Proof of Concept’ or pilot-mode – there is uncertainty over its success or longevity. For the initial release of these workloads, releasing on a quick and cheaply spun up public cloud environment could be more cost effective. After time, once the new service or workload has been ‘bedded-in’ it can then be moved off to more cost efficient infrastructure such as on-premises or private cloud.
Bespoke infrastructure requirements or management of custom code applications:
To be profitable and popular with users, public cloud vendors only offer technologies and solutions that appeal to the mass market. This can sometimes mean that specific infrastructure or hardware that an application needs – especially in-house custom built applications – will often not be found on public cloud offerings. In other scenarios, sometimes a specific workload will require a large amount of RAM but a small amount of CPU, comparatively. A public cloud instance will try to run the workload with more powerful tooling and therefore not be a cost-effective solution.
Requirements for high-availability and disaster recovery:
These two components often don’t go hand-in-hand – a public cloud environment can offer high-availability but is often expensive to set up disaster recovery. However, sufficient disaster recovery is often a strategy aligned with a geo-redundant architecture. A geo-redundant architecture would mean set-up of single private clouds and secondary data centres – at a cost that is hard to justify, but also hard to say no to.
Hybrid Cloud architecture here can offer a good solution by balancing the two priorities of high-availability and disaster recovery whereby the production environment can be held on private cloud, while a back-up recovery environment can be sitting on a public cloud and ready to be switched-on if the occasion ever arises – ie. cybersecurity attack or large peak load event.
Enablement of automation:
If the organisation is in a dynamic state and frequently evolving to meet regulatory or customer demand, Hybrid Cloud architectures that are powered by automation can meet the speed of demand. New technologies in infrastructure automation can create seamless flow, orchestration and integration across on-premises, private and public cloud environments that can ultimately speed up operating systems, reduce manual handling and release software and services faster.
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How does Advent One approach Hybrid Cloud?
Advent One partners with Australian enterprises to drive maximum value from their Hybrid Cloud infrastructure. We use expert methodology and automation to turn complex IT infrastructure, both on-premise and in the cloud, into an orchestrated and automated single entity that gives IT teams the control and visibility they need to succeed.
Meet with Advent One to learn how you can refresh, organise and optimise your Hybrid Cloud environment. In this meeting you will learn from Advent One’s experts on how to:
- Build systems that meet regulatory and compliance requirements for data management in your Hybrid Cloud environment;
- Reduce the current total cost of ownership of your current set-up through automation and orchestration;
- Best practices for building a Hybrid Cloud strategy that is future-proofed and cyber resilient.
In exchange for your time, Advent One will purchase 2 Gold Class tickets for you and a plus one to enjoy a treat on us! Learn more about this offer here.