Primary Factors Driving the Growth of the Hybrid Cloud

While the public cloud has gotten a lot of attention over the last several years, many believe the private and hybrid cloud computing markets are best positioned to take over the top spot. Hybrid cloud computing environments use a mix of on-premises and cloud services (both public and private cloud instances), with orchestration between the two platforms. Together the hybrid cloud environment can run any number of business-critical IT services from infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) to platform-as-a-service (PaaS), or software-as-a-service (SaaS), for example. Smart companies are choosing private and hybrid models to reduced costs, speed development and empower developers and to improve scalability.

Microsoft Azure Stack, AWS, VMware and more!

New technology releases by many leading cloud providers in the last few years show a commitment to the hybrid cloud and private cloud space. For example, Microsoft released Azure Stack as a private cloud IaaS platform, AWS is now offering VMware on its AWS hybrid cloud offering, and Oracle and IBM have their own in-house hybrid cloud services. A study from MarketsandMarkets predicts that the hybrid cloud market is estimated to grow to $91.74 billion by 2021. (Source: MarketsandMarkets). What does all this mean, and what’s behind the surge in growth of the hybrid cloud markets? Let’s take a closer look at the primary driving factors.

1.    Cut time to market – In an increasingly competitive world, companies need the ability to speed development time and respond more quickly to customer needs. A hybrid, private, or multi-cloud environment gives business the ultimate flexibility to handle spikes in demand and cut application development and testing cycles by spinning up and adding additional cloud-computing resources whenever needed. This could mean running development and testing on a private cloud and then deploying the applications on a public cloud. A hybrid cloud offers the best of both worlds with the ability to move workloads back and forth between private and public clouds leveraging API compatibility. This kind of flexibility and scalability makes companies much more responsive and agile.
2.   Digital transformation is top of mind- Innovation and digital transformation are two areas that are top of mind for companies today. Because hybrid clouds can deliver IT costs savings of nearly 20% to 30%, companies have the resources to invest that money into other areas of the business and sharpen the focus on innovation (Source: EMC). The hybrid cloud model also democratizes data across the organization and supports this effort. It opens up data to more consumers in the organization at a much faster pace, from sales and marketing to operations and management. When more individuals can interact with and analyze data more quickly and more consistently using APIs, data visualization tools, and collaborative applications, they can form insights and reshape strategies and campaigns, much more effectively. They can also set performance-based metrics to track their progress and continue along the digital transformation path.
3.   The need for speed in analyzing large data sets- As BI becomes more intertwined with companies’ strategies, leaders need the ability to effectively store, correlate and analyze large datasets. Hybrid cloud resources are perfect for this task because they offer greater processing speed and scalability and tighter security controls, compared to most public cloud offerings. Using a hybrid cloud model, BI teams can analyze more data and can provide actionable information at a much faster rate.
4.      Containerization is growing too- As businesses turn to containers in the production environment, the need for the hybrid cloud will continue to grow in stride. Thanks to the open platform Docker, Google’s Kubernetes and Containerization-as-a-Service (CaaS), containers are fast becoming the chosen application delivery method, ensuring software runs reliably when moved from one environment to another. By delivering all applications components into a single, more portable package, companies can ensure consistent application performance moving to and from environments or operating systems. A containerized environment can shorten development cycles, cut costs and improve portability and scalability of applications. These containers run very efficiently in hybrid and multi-cloud environments (i.e. applications that scale dynamically or run sporadically) and many of the benefits run in parallel.

More than just showing potential, hybrid cloud has secured its position as a top choice for enterprises looking to lower IT operating cost and improve scalability. Its success rests on the model’s proven track record in supporting the biggest business imperatives today, including faster development and deployment, innovation, containerization and accessing greater business insight from BI.