Many of Australia’s leading businesses have embarked or chosen to pursue a long-term Hybrid Cloud approach. Hybrid Cloud offers the most options across interoperability, infrastructure management, flexibility, latency and resiliency compared to cloud-native or traditional on-premises only architectures.
Shifting traditional IT infrastructure to Hybrid Cloud, in a strategic and well-executed fashion, can help create technology and business benefits including:
- Improved system performance and latency;
- Increased employee productivity and motivation;
- Cloud agility and speed-to-market improvements on new services;
- Automation of basic infrastructure management tasks;
- Scalable systems and applications;
- Better customer experiences.
However, Hybrid Cloud does rely on a vaster scope of technological skill sets across infrastructure, applications, security, cloud, automation and integration. Which, in the light of Australia’s (and the rest of the world’s) IT talent skills shortage, makes it a tough system to manage. A lack of in-house technology expertise across all of these specialities can create security risks, architecture issues, slow deployments and system failure.
According to Salesforce’s Digital Skills Index, an amazing 76% of organisations feel they do not have the necessary skills internally to address digital-first and cloud oriented work. Which is why a number of organisations (and our customers) are turning to specialist Hybrid Cloud consulting and technology partners like Advent One. We have then therefore documented some key tips to help you in finding the right partner.
What to look for in a Hybrid Cloud service provider:
- Understanding of your vertical, workloads and company specifics: A Hybrid Cloud provider should have a team based within your region and have demonstrated expertise in building Hybrid Cloud solutions across companies that you know. This will then help guide which workloads, data and applications need to be sitting in the public cloud and which security and compliance based workloads should be on-premises, and how far your internal team can go to maintain the system moving forward. This will also help to address any technical support issues on-shore and in your timezone.
- They should be able to advise on performance benchmarks and system optimisation: If your company is experiencing latency or resiliency issues, but you don’t know how bad it is, your Hybrid Cloud provider should be able to investigate and guide your organisation to industry benchmarked performance standards. Not only will this upskill your existing team, but it will also enable you to continuously improve infrastructure, applications and services deployment with ease.
- Be across all on-premises, private cloud and public cloud investments: With subject matter expertise in all of these domains, a Hybrid Cloud service provider should be a breadth of knowledge on best licensing options, data egress/ingress strategies and cost optimisation tactics across all major public cloud providers. The continual changing nature of pricing models and support for certain tools means that a Hybrid Cloud service provider is the best option for guidance given that they deal with these scenarios on a daily basis, versus your over-capacity internal team.
- They know all about migration in and out of the cloud: Cloud architecture expertise is one thing, but expertise in moving workloads in and out of cloud and on-premise environments takes a community. Often you will need infrastructure specialists, automation expertise, software development and cloud architecture knowledge to manage two-way migration paths. In the light of an IT talent shortage, it is rare that an organisation will have all of these skills in-house and readily available.
- Automation, orchestration and security is the backbone of service delivery: Hybrid Cloud deployments and run-time are all underpinned by smooth orchestration, and simple automation with a view for security. These three very important features of technology can sometimes be forgotten or not prioritised as part of a Hybrid Cloud journey. A Hybrid Cloud service provider should be able to advise you on how to reduce costs and reliance on IT human capital by enabling automation, system orchestration and easy-to-manage security controls.
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Why Advent One?
When companies partner with Advent One, they gain specialist guidance and delivery support to build a resilient and future-proofed Hybrid Cloud environment. Every day we work across cloud deployment, infrastructure automation, cybersecurity, workflow management, monitoring and back-up scenarios that build our internal expertise on best practices.
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.