Hybrid Cloud: An Inevitable Option for Most Businesses


Hybrid Cloud: An Inevitable Option for Most Businesses

Cloud computing has and will continue to provide businesses with the flexibility and efficiencies they require to grow and meet the needs of all users. It provides the infrastructure, software, and platforms required to meet the needs of all types of organisations. In a recent conversation with the Editor of Siliconindia, Srikanth Doranadula, Vice President - Hybrid Cloud Systems, Oracle India, shared his thoughts on how hybrid cloud can improve an organization's flexibility and efficiency.

What are the hybrid cloud trends currently?

Digital transformation has now become an imperative across organisations and sectors to a point that businesses have had to shift their focus entirely from traditional IT setup to ensure business resilience. During this transformation, businesses with a well thought-over cloud strategy have been able to fully leverage its benefits at the earliest. For some, this strategy may include a multicloud environment to run different workloads on different cloud and avoid vendor lock-in, for others it maybe to leverage a single public cloud vendor to enjoy the benefits across board and for the rest of them it maybe a hybrid cloud environment where they are able to ensure data sovereignty and security along with resolving data latency requirements.

At the pace with which organisations are accepting a hybrid cloud environment currently goes to indicate how well this will eventually grow. To support this, market researches suggest that hybrid cloud market will reach nearly USD 97.6 billion by 2023.We too have witnessed a similar trend where our customers are gradually aligning their cloud strategies to leverage the hybrid cloud environment via our innovative offerings. Many organisations are also planning of taking on the hybrid cloud route to initially understand the nuances of cloud and then fully invest into it. Any cloud reluctant organisation can start their cloud journey by having some of their data on premise and rest of it on cloud.

Another significant trend isopen hybrid cloud solutions helping to do away with vendor lock-ins. We are witnessing more acceptance towards open hybrid cloud which means to combine open source and open governance with the hybrid cloud model. Organisations aim to build once and deploy it anywhere that they want to between any clouds.

The approach adopted by each organisation continues to be varied, depending on factors like, segment/markets that they operate on, criticality the applications, data sovereignty etc. The trend of Hybrid cloud will continue to stay for some more time.  

Cloud computing has created a new day for IT firms, commerce and corporate house, etc. How do hybrid cloud systems enhance the flexibility and efficiency within an enterprise?

As businesses move on from their on-premises traditional way of approaching IT, they are able to gradually move into the cloud world with a hybrid cloud approach. Amongst its many benefits, the top one remains that organisations are able to create a specific hybrid cloud strategy customised to their needs. Additionally, organisations are also able to maintain unmatched flexibility by carefully and systematically segmenting data and configuring it between on premise and cloud. This also ensures that maximum control remains with the organisation and they are able to ensure data residency.

Hybrid cloud also ensures utmost security of data considering data can be deeply scanned to understand its risk tolerance and basis that only the most sensitive data can be kept on-prem. While an evolved and responsible public cloud vendor usually offers unmatched security however given various compliance and regulatory issues, hybrid cloud can be an option to manage innovation.Organisations can also ensure efficiency by leveraging hybrid cloud considering it give IT leaders a sense of what a complete cloud environment maybe like without diving into it entirely. Additionally, hybrid cloud is a significant way to control IT budgets and save on IT CAPEX to leverage a pay-per-use low cost OPEX.

Commenting specifically on flexibility,  a lot of applications require different compute power/capacity at different times.For example the load on payment gateways during a popular sporting contest, or a festive season as against a regular normal working day is substantially high.The customer experiences is the key during these time and with Hybrid Cloud the companies can ensure the same seamless experience for the customer, without additional Capex thus reducing longterm investments and increasing efficiency. Same applies to Devops environment, or even for a start up who wants to run it all on the cloud without initial investments. A phase wise approach in the cloud is possible giving organisations the flexibility to make their digital transformation over a period of time at the same time increase efficiency, innovation and provide an excellent customer experience at the same time.

What are the industries that can benefit from hybrid cloud offerings?

While hybrid cloud as an offering is open to all however it can become an ideal option for government, defense, and intelligence with data sovereignty and high security needs. Additionally, even beyond these, we truly believe that any business in the regulated space including BFSI or telecom can easily leverage hybrid cloud to enjoy the benefits of a cloud solution and adhere to their regulations. We also motivate manylate adopter of cloud in any sector to understand the cloud world in a phase wise manner with hybrid cloud and truly map out what cloud related aspects bring them the maximum benefits.

At Oracle too, we have a very diverse portfolio of clients leveraging our hybrid cloud offering - the OCI Dedicated Region, including Nomura Research Institute (NRI), Australian Data Centers, Vodafone, and NEOM. These businesses run critical workloads while retaining data and service control.

What are the anticipated challenges of adopting hybrid cloud systems? How can the organisations navigate these challenges?

Every IT setup will have some challenges for different organisations. For examples, with on-premise, some customers may find it difficult to maintain hardware and with cloud networking, some customers may witness high resource process related latency issues. Hybrid cloud too has certain set of challenges which could be migration complexity for some organisations which are new to cloud and are not leveraging the right cloud provider. The it could also be ensuring proper utilization of a hybrid cloud environment and ensuring return on investment. Another challenge for some of the organisation is in avoiding errors in managing compliances. However all of these challenges can be easily managed if a responsible cloud provider like Oracle takes the duty of ensuring a smooth cloud journey for its customer.

Additionally, another key aspect in managing hybrid cloud systems is finding the right cloud managing resource. It is important for cloud reliant organisation to have expert IT teams. Cloud providers can extend support here as well and offer training and certification in understanding their cloud offerings. At Oracle too, we offer, OCI training and free certification via Oracle academy to empower our customers.

How is Hybrid cloud market anticipated to be in the coming years?

As businesses and technology become one, organisations will experiment with various cloud environments to find the right fit for their goals. Considering hybrid cloud is already gaining momentum across sectors, we foresee a significant rise in its acceptance as businesses learn the value it brings. Beyond superior cloud economics, businesses also get abundance of choice and agility to ensure business resilience which is the need of the hour. Cloud strategies around hybrid cloud will especially rise as organisations entering cloud will take this as the first phase of their digitization journey. We also foresee more and more regulated organsiation to accept cloud and take this route for their innovation and business led advancements.