X shades of grey — Hybrid Cloud

Different view
The way businesses look at computing has changed radically and that is what is driving cloud computing in all its varieties, according to Logicalis director Patrick Jordan. “CIOs are just not as concerned any more about software and physical hardware in the traditional sense but about how they can deliver the resources to the users in the ways that people today wish to consume them. When it comes to the types of cloud, we believe it comes down quickly to the definition of the service that needs to be delivered. CIOs are looking for rapid self-provisioning, automation, world class security and a new model of IT delivery. Today’s CIO is actually now more like a Head of Internal Services and IT today is becoming the department that can give you what you want because cloud resources enable it to do that.”

“The fact is that CFOs and marketing and others all have access today to useful business services from the cloud. When they go to IT their attitude is ‘We need this in a week … better still tomorrow’. If you are stuck in the old world of hardware purchasing and formalities they will go ahead without you. So speed and agility in service delivery is the objective, cliché though it has become.”

 

advertisement

 

Jordan said firmly that hybrid cloud begins with and cannot exist without private cloud. “Organisations can struggle to implement private clouds but they need to demonstrate their value first. The prerequisite is that fundamental shift in how IT is delivered across people, processes and business management. You then look at hybrid in the light of what services need the agility, how are they currently delivered and how will cloud enable better service performance.”

Interestingly, Jordan also asserted that private cloud is more ‘commercially advantaged’ than public. “Look thoroughly at the TCO and all the metrics you will invariably find that an efficient, well-designed private cloud is the most cost-effective. That is one reason why the private cloud market has matured and we are seeing quiet but significant growth in demand. Hybrid could, coming from that context, is simply a burst-out capability. If the organisation has not invested the thinking and design to bring the initial benefits of cloud on-site—and is not prepared to dump everything onto public cloud—it cannot take advantage of the complementary benefits that hybrid cloud can add.”

Fit for cloud
There is one salient fact when looking at cloud computing choices, said Ronan Dalton, IBM cloud leader for Ireland: “Not everything is a fit for cloud. That is where hybrid cloud finds its strongest space. Newer, smaller organisations are often in a position to think of nothing but cloud as the enabler for rapid time to market and constant change. Older and usually larger enterprises have an inescapable on-site heritage. Often they have let some of it go to external data centres or managed services and you could regard cloud services as a further extension of that process. But not all applications or workloads are going to be fit for cloud. The hybrid approach offers a manageable way to combine resources and business benefits.”

In the context today of an evolution towards software-defined everything in ICT, Dalton said the question is what are we trying to achieve? “We are really trying to carve up existing infrastructure resources to utilise the hardware and systems better. With networking and storage we can slice and dice and readily change to maximise that utilisation. So hybrid IT and hybrid cloud is where it’s all at right now in many ways and that also fits very well with expert managed services.”

Nervousness
Right now in Ireland the actual state of play is all about hybrid, said Aidan Rowsome, head of cloud practice in Unity Technology Solutions. “When we go into clients today they get very nervous unless we can talk hybrid. That is across both public and private sectors. They are telling us that they have key line of business applications, maybe old maybe new, that are going to be part of their mix for the foreseeable future. They are simply not about to put them up into public cloud.”

One part of the context is that there is a general lack of real understanding of the various forms of cloud and what they can do and the pros and cons. “That is true up to quite high levels of management. But in fact that does not really matter because much of the conversation will be about the business and its needs rather than the specifics of the technology. Clients are looking for a clear plan that identifies what suitable workloads might with real value be moved to cloud and what will be on-premise indefinitely and how to amalgamate them. Then there is the key question of how that will be served out to the users.”

De facto norm
“I think hybrid cloud is the de facto norm and likely to remain so for some years to come,” said Rowsome. “Those line of business applications that cannot be or will not be sent to the cloud are accompanied in daily use by new SaaS solutions and even some workloads utilising public cloud. The picture is of a mixed portfolio of IT capabilities and services, chosen to suit the range of activities and with some elements that will probably change regularly as well as the core constants. Incidentally, or in truth importantly, organisations are now very conscious that moving workloads also involves taking them back. The exit strategy has become part of the planning for any cloud component.”