Cloud computing plays a massive role in achieving continuous digital transformation — an imperative for future-facing enterprises. While cloud is hardly a new concept and has seen large-scale applications already, the shape-shifting digital ecosystem is consistently pushing for various tech innovations, purpose-worthy subscription models and new approaches in the area.
The future belongs to hybrid cloud, which combines the best of on-premises infrastructure and public and private cloud. Unsurprisingly, it is growing in popularity among organizations of all sizes and across industries. The global hybrid cloud market is projected to be worth $293.15 billion by 2030, up from just $20.77 billion in 2020, reflecting a remarkable CAGR of 19% in the forecast period.
This growth can be attributed to changing business needs and the ever-evolving digital landscape. While the choice of the cloud model is based on an enterprise's digital objectives, it is fair to say that hybrid cloud is increasingly finding takers. This is due to the advantages it offers in the form of improved flexibility, agility, scalability, security and compliance, disaster recovery and business continuity, geographical reach and cost optimization. And organizations hoping to adopt a hybrid cloud model need not make substantial upfront investments. They can opt for an as-a-service (aaS) model to leverage hybrid cloud without incurring significant CapEx or OpEx.
The as-a-service model: An essential for seamless adoption and optimization of hybrid cloud
The as-a-service model allows organizations to select and consume specific cloud services based on their needs without having to invest in on-premises infrastructure or commit to long-term contracts. This flexibility is particularly beneficial in a hybrid cloud environment, where workloads can be distributed across multiple platforms. Similarly, organizations can easily scale their cloud resources up or down through efficient allocation between the private and public cloud environments based on workload requirements.
The as-a-service model also promotes interoperability between different cloud platforms and facilitates the integration of various services. Enterprises can utilize the model for consistent management and integration across hybrid cloud environments. Organizations can rapidly adopt and experiment with new technologies and services offered by cloud providers. This results in improved agility and innovation, enabling enterprises to optimize their hybrid infrastructure to meet evolving business needs.
Finally, the as-a-service approach helps organizations avoid significant upfront costs associated with purchasing and maintaining hardware and software. Instead, they can pay for cloud services on a subscription or usage basis. This cost efficiency is particularly relevant in a hybrid cloud scenario, where organizations can optimize resource utilization and leverage cost-effective public cloud services when appropriate.
Hybrid Cloud-as-a-Service: Turning challenges into opportunities
Hybrid cloud’s potential and promise are beyond doubt, but implementing it comes with its share of challenges. For instance, managing the infrastructure and integrating on-prem, public and private cloud workloads can be complex and tricky for businesses with conventional and limited IT capabilities. Similarly, lack of synchronization, inadequate subject matter expertise and faulty cloud policies can lead to data inconsistency, poor application performance and high latency. All these can lead to compromised outcomes and high costs.
Enterprises need a fresh approach to hybrid cloud implementation and journey with a solution that not only addresses the current challenges but also unlocks opportunities for the future. Infrastructure modernization solutions like HCLTech and Dell's Hybrid Cloud as-a-Service provide impeccable application performance, cost optimization, flexibility, sustainability, security and regulatory control.
Hybrid Cloud-as-a-Service is an IT infrastructure transformation solution for forward-looking enterprises, enabling them to utilize best-of-breed cloud innovations, modernize their IT and optimize the cloud experience and consume cutting-edge technology in the most cost-efficient manner. Hybrid Cloud-as-a-Service also combines various key elements to deliver a custom hybrid cloud solution that makes end-to-end IT transformation easier and provides a roadmap to reduce IT infrastructure costs. Some of its defining highlights include:
- Predefined architecture: The solution presents a finite set of infrastructure solutions to build an on-premises solution that seamlessly integrates with existing cloud, PaaS, Edge and remote platforms
- Financial modeling: This enhances flexibility for enterprises to consume IT resources on an as-need basis and pay accordingly. It also offers an additional advantage of buying back existing assets
- Automation and integration: The solution offers out-of-box automation and integration with existing tools and public cloud platforms, which extends the much-needed agility for faster business outcomes, better availability and higher ROI
- Customized operations: A tailor-made operating model for hybrid infrastructure, which offers full-stack observability to connect IT with business outcomes, with an integrated framework
- Security: Robust integrated security frameworks enhance infrastructure and data security across all layers of IT operations and hybrid cloud workloads
- Sustainability: With an eye on the future of all enterprise IT and cloud initiatives, the solution modernizes infrastructure and operating environments, making IT more sustainable and driving holistic transformation
In conclusion
It’s imperative for enterprises to develop essential, secure infrastructure and services for all multicloud deployment needs. This will empower them to achieve transformation goals with business-aligned IT running across a hybrid cloud environment. Leveraging solutions with reference architecture across networks, storage and compute will help in deploying fast and standardized processes that can be modified for specific business requirements. This will help them stay competitive, relevant and profitable in the future business paradigm.
