According to analysts, hybrid cloud is the way of the future not only for large enterprise, but also for mid-size and smaller companies.
In 2013, analyst Gartner predicted that around half of enterprises will be using hybrid cloud by 2017. While it acknowledged at the time that actual hybrid deployments were rare, in the intervening period, this has changed dramatically, as organisations have become more comfortable with workloads that suit this type of deployment, and also with much done to ease fears around control, orchestration, regulation and, critically, security.
The market prediction figures reflect this growing acceptance too. Analyst IDC has predicted that the global cloud market, including private, public and hybrid clouds, will hit $118 billion (€111 billion) in 2015, potentially cresting at $200 billion (€189 billion) by 2018.
“Security remains the number one brake on cloud adoption, but we see more CIOs recognising that cloud providers offer some of the most secure IT on the planet,” said Frank Gens, analyst, IDC.
However, irrespective of scale, when an organisation begins to consume services from the cloud, comparisons between these and whatever is kept on premises are inevitable, leading many to fear that hybrid cloud will be the beginning of the end for IT departments.
The sheers scale and depth of resources that can be wielded by the web giants in the arena, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure, and the likes of Rackspace and Engineyard, mean that the services they can provide directly, or that can be leveraged from their platforms, have the potential to outclass the capabilities of even the best in-house teams. This can lead to inevitable comparisons that may not always be like for like, and may lead a board or business unit leaders to question the wisdom of keeping anything on-premise. While ultimately that is a business decision, there can be mitigating factors too, such as data residence, regulation and other legal considerations.
This can leave IT departments in a beleaguered state as they struggle to either implement something in-house that can perform as well as the web giants, or work with a local partner for the same.
The latest in the TechFire series of briefings, in association with E-TEC Power Management and Schneider Electric, will explore these themes and show how vendor developments are bringing the capabilities of the web giants to organisations and providers at the local level. Through modular infrastructure, easy integration and complete interoperability, the capabilities of the giants are being made available to organisations of all sizes, allowing them to ensure that whatever is retained in the private cloud is neither constrained nor compromised.
Owen Wynne, contracts and engineering manager, eircom, will describe eircom’s own experience in this area, as it seeks to provide local users with globally competitive services.
For more details and to register for this free event, see www.techfire.ie
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