More organisations support hybrid and multi-cloud environments as both workers and workloads expand to more locations. Bring-your-own-device policies enable workers to access corporate applications and services from multiple places and platforms, and modern development tools decouple apps and services from the infrastructure that they run on, allowing flexible movement according to business needs.
IT departments have adopted a variety of infrastructures and platforms on corporate premises and the cloud to accommodate these changes, creating the corporate hybrid cloud.
Businesses are also evaluating their infrastructure needs more critically and making more strategic choices among the available options, sometimes using multiple public cloud providers or a multi-cloud environment.
Frost & Sullivan’s 2021 research finds that 41% of businesses globally have implemented a hybrid cloud, while 36% use a multi-cloud environment. Some businesses use a hybrid cloud platform to introduce visibility, control, advanced data protection and security, and analytics.
But not everyone is on the same level when it comes to capturing the benefits of hybrid cloud. While some struggle to manage their assets in a complete environment, others can’t get to the ideal hybrid scenario because of complexity, team structures, or organisational challenges, such as difficulty in holistically managing policies, enforcement, and security across vendors.
“Broad, comprehensive enterprise digital transformation introduces new business risks,” said Toph Whitmore, Frost & Sullivan industry director. He added that the to-be-managed enabling technology fabric now extends into the cloud and widens to encompass work-from-anywhere connectivity.
“IT leaders must balance organisational cloud aspiration with operational realities, a dichotomy that complicates security delivery, efficacy, and management. Securing hybrid- and multi-cloud environments can require IT leaders to integrate solutions to mitigate risk.”
Toph Whitmore
Cloud migration unlocks organisational data value and allows access to modern services that provide softer benefits, like operational efficiencies or improved regulatory compliance.
Hybrid and multi-cloud strategies can:
- Help against cloud lock-in to optimise costs continually.
- Enable rapid flexibility to gain tremendous value.
- Improve cost optimisation, uptime, and governance.
- Mitigate security and compliance risk.
- Implement data protection strategies and optimise ROI.