Among the various cloud models in existence today, the most appealing has to be the hybrid cloud. This is at least for the enterprise that is freshly developing a total cloud migration strategy, or the one looking to gain the best of both the cloud computing, as well as on-premises resources. The digital transformation wave that is taking the business and enterprise world by storm is the primary source of this; as progressively more organizations gradually adopting the cloud as their platform of choice for all present and future operations.
Delving more into the hybrid cloud model; it is attractive to a freshly cloud-adopting enterprise due to the following reasons:
- Appropriate and cost-effective treatment of all the workloads, without significant running costs associated with hybrid-cloud infrastructures.
- Much better continuity in the event of a disaster or data loss, due to the availability of resources both on-premises as well as in the cloud.
- Continued product innovation and delivery rapidity due to the existence of two distinct operational infrastructures and databases.
- Greater information security capability due to retention of sensitive data on to secure, on-premises servers (in most organizational cases).
Now, the cloud, or rather, the complete adoption of and migration to it, is on the roadmap for thousands of organizations all over the world. In fact, according to one estimate, an 83 percent majority of functional enterprise workloads will have been transferred into cloud infrastructures by 2020. The same report puts the hybrid cloud user percentage at 22 percent, by the same year. This is clear indication that with the onset of mass cloud adoption, the enterprises and indeed the industries experiencing the transformation will still have the considerable safer and more scalable cloud model in their sights, as well as in the internal infrastructure itself.
Having established the merits of a cloud strategy, it is important to discuss the ideal deployment strategy of a hybrid-cloud setup. Following are some of the vital components of a hybrid-cloud strategy that will prove to be successful even years from today, most probably regardless of the technological and organizational advancements that are bound to come to the fore.
Scalability Considerations
Scaling costs are a major concern when it comes to the development and/or deployment of any cloud strategy. This is because the applications an enterprise will be developing, and especially the cloud-based optimization they might be performing on said application may need additional capacity or may need to satisfy additional parameters, all of which will require scaling up, in order to accommodate.
CIO’s need to keep the scalability of the hybrid-cloud infrastructure when formulating the strategy for the hybrid-cloud deployment.
Hybrid Cloud Government Best Practices
According to CIO Insights, there are five basics of successful hybrid cloud government; namely widespread network access, self-service on demand, calculated services, realistic elasticity and pooling resources. These are cookie-cutter elements which every enterprise needs to encompass in their hybrid-cloud strategy. Additionally, since each enterprise is different, with different scalability estimates and varying cloud computing parameters, there needs to be a set of customized best practices which are set according to the unique needs of the organization.
One very important factor to consider is the rate of hybrid-cloud implementation, especially the speed at which each operational process is transferred to its designated space in the cloud. It is a given, in a hybrid-cloud environment that some processes, mainly the most sensitive ones will remain on-premises. Ideally, a measured set of transfers will be planned, in order to optimize the operation of each department or segment on the cloud sector.
Azure-specific Deployment Training
If your enterprise has been running Microsoft services on the local infrastructure, chances are that you will be looking for the same functionality and ease of operation that said services have provided in the past. Azure is the ideal platform in this sense, especially since it has its own set of hybrid-cloud services that facilitate deployment, adoption and operation. Therefore, the Azure platform will most likely be the host of your particular set of hybrid-cloud applications and processes.
While this is advantageous for any enterprise; for the ones who are not familiar with Microsoft Azure, the internal teams will need to be trained on Azure fundamentals and advanced concepts. Following are some of the advantages of training your teams on MS Azure.
- Better understanding of intrinsic Azure operation concepts, which will allow for both pre-performed as well as on the fly optimizations of processes according to Azure specification and parameters.
- Additional clarity regarding the Azure framework, which offers its own advantages in terms of scalability and application development, hosting and deployment features.
- Overall ease of strategic formation and operations on the organizational level. As compared to other cloud platforms, Azure offers a greater degree of user-friendliness, as well as most familiar features such as the Office suite.
MS Azure training empowers teams with the ability to not just formulate strategies that will stand the test of time, even in the rapidly moving technological climate; but will also serve as an example for other organizations looking to adopt a hybrid-cloud structure.
Make sure to train your teams on Azure concepts, and to adopt an Azure-based hybrid cloud infrastructure. Most importantly, make sure to follow the best strategic practices for a streamlined and smooth hybrid-cloud deployment.