“Agility is key because commercial arrangements change and your data needs to be able to move. You need to be able to move both your application and your data seamlessly from public to private or from private to public or from public to another public provider. That’s where the true value of being agile lies.”
At the same time, needs can vary from industry to industry.
“Some organisations won’t want to put certain workflows into the public cloud but others will be fine. And the next organisation, maybe in a different industry with different compliancy and different issues in front of them, might be fine with both. The key is to do your research before you commit,” said McGahon.
Whatever you’re using hybrid cloud for, whether it’s development and testing, running production applications or managing existing applications, you still need to concern yourself with complex non-trivial things like configuration management. If I’m running something which spans my premises and something in, say, IBM Softshare, and I need to change that thing, I need to change it in two places: I need to change bits of it on-premise and bits of it which are without the firewall, Stephen Moffat, IBM
A theme that emerges across the industry is that while hybrid cloud may have risen to prominence on the back of its capacity to reduce costs, this alone cannot be a deciding factor for companies embarking or expanding their use of the technology.
Investment for advantage
“When cloud was being touted as a means of reducing costs, that was true but you had to make investments to get that advantage,” said Stephen Moffatt, cloud computing leader with IBM Ireland. “When cloud was being pitched as the agile, flexible, plastic thing to go for, that was also true but it was still also true that you had to make investments to take advantage of that, investments in people and technology and skills around automation.”
According to Moffat, the current compelling argument in favour of hybrid cloud still needs to be tempered with investment. While hybrid cloud is commonly marketed for its ability to give control over on-premise and shared cloud environments, it all needs to be monitored.
“It’s still true that you have to make investments to take advantage of that and the investments you can make are still in technology and people and process,” said Moffat.
“Whatever you’re using hybrid cloud for, whether it’s development and testing, running production applications or managing existing applications, you still need to concern yourself with complex non-trivial things like configuration management. If I’m running something which spans my premises and something in, say, IBM Softshare and I need to change that thing, I need to change it in two places: I need to change bits of it on-premise and bits of it which are without the firewall.”
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers