83% of companies have or plan to incorporate hybrid IT in their current infrastructure.1
If you are the CIO or CEO of a business, consider for a moment if your company were allowed to do a complete reboot of its IT operations right now from day one. How different would you do things if you were starting from scratch today?
- You would probably start with a vision for the role that IT would play in your organization.
- You would probably focus on aligning IT innovation and expenditures with business objects.
- You probably would not support so much proprietary hardware and software.
- You would most likely host as many digital services in the cloud as possible.
The fact is that many data centers are a culmination of hundreds, maybe thousands of decisions made over time. Some decisions made at the time in a rather haphazard manner resulted in long lasting implications that have stymied innovation and limited flexibility today. Investing in data center infrastructure is not just about expenditure costs, it is about opportunity costs as well. As soon as we choose one path, we forego the possible innovations of other alternatives. Like other business units within the organization, the ramifications of decisions made by IT can reign far into the future.
Whether it is the digital transformation that is taking place across the globe or the ominous threat of unforeseen disruptors bringing down established companies and industries, business dynamics today demand a fresh approach to how we implement IT. For startup companies today, that task is easy. For those saddled with existing IT infrastructure, the mission is far more complicated.
Fortunately, there is an inventive approach that many companies are implementing today as an overarching strategy called Hybrid IT. Gartner in fact, predicts that by 2020, hybrid infrastructure will be in use by 90 percent of organizations.2 So just what is it about Hybrid IT that has captured the attention of so many IT and business leaders today? Below, we highlight five reasons why your IT strategy should be Hybrid IT.
1. THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
The Cambridge dictionary defines the phrase as, a situation in which you can enjoy the advantages of two very different things at the same time. Who doesn’t want that? Hybrid IT is made up of two worlds, one being the traditional onpremises data center, the other being one or more clouds. The traditional world was built around the principles of predictability, controllability, stability and maximum security. Cloud computing is an exploratory world that emphasizes agility, speed, and maximum availability.
As humans, we do not all thrive within the same identical environments. Part of the natural progression of life is for us to find the ideal environments that we flourish in to maximize our potential. It is about choosing the right environment. Hybrid IT is also about choice. It is about examining the required resources, security requirements, and performance needs of a designated workload in order to determine which world is a better fit. Not all applications can function in the cloud and some resources must reside on-premises due to security concerns or compliancy requirements. In other cases, mobile computing and IoT are requiring services be hosted at the far edge of the enterprise within the cloud. The bottom line is that having the ability to utilize two separate environments for your workloads brings great flexibility to your enterprise.
2. LOWER COST EXPENDITURES
Embracing Hybrid IT means pursuing an unbiased analysis of your workloads which means being able to put your pride aside somewhat. This is because many times the cloud can host workloads at a lower cost than internal IT. By approaching all available options for new services that business units within the company need in an impartial manner, you can aid them in finding the best solution at the best price. Internal IT should not care where a designated workload is hosted. It should only be about making their internal customers happy. This is done by offering a variety of options. A recent study by IDC showed that by 2018, over 50% of enterprises will create and/or partner with industry cloud platforms to distribute their own innovations or source others.4
The cloud does not always have to be a public cloud. Often times, compliancy and security issues will compel IT to host designated workloads on their own private clouds. Garnter reports that Hybrid IT technologies today will play a key role in IT cost savings, reducing IT departments I&O costs by 25% by 2020.3 There are instances however in which you will find that traditional IT may indeed offer a lower cost option.
3. SECURITY
We have already pointed out that security concerns will influence whether a workload is hosted internally or in the public cloud. Sometimes this may require backend operations reside on-premises while frontend digital web services reside in the public cloud. In some cases, all components of the workload must reside locally. But security concerns can also point to the cloud as well. Large cloud vendors can offer security tools and infrastructure that are unaffordable for many businesses. Hybrid IT also helps to discourage shadow IT, the process in which business units within the company pursue IT alternatives from outside sources without formal approval from Internal IT. This can in turn open the enterprise up to vulnerabilities. By conveying to your users that corporate IT is open to solutions both inside and outside of the company, users will buy in, allowing internal IT to ensure that security and compliancy concerns are addressed.
4. GREATER INNOVATION
In order to succeed in today’s globally competitive environment, leaders in both business and IT must be able to constantly innovate and develop value-creating ideas for their respective companies.
Hybrid IT accomplishes this in two ways:
- Solutions are not just limited to those within the organization. Instead, solutions are sought wherever necessary in order to find the most innovative solution.
- IT professionals now serve as IT brokers rather than simply support technicians, brokering the best solution for the business objective at hand.
5. GREATER RESILIENCY AND DEPENDABILITY
Using Hybrid IT, legacy applications reside on-premises where they function best. Resources and services hosted in the cloud however can enjoy unprecedented levels of failover and redundancy, incorporating multiple regions. Backups and disaster recovery possibilities are endless in the cloud where physical geography is meaningless. Services can be diverted between on-premises and public cloud resources using simple unified interfaces.
Established companies may not be able to simply start over, but they can refocus their efforts and incorporate this new approach of Hybrid IT. More innovation and less costs, both real and opportunity. That is what Hybrid IT is all about.
2. https://www.technative.io/90-of-organizations-will-adopt-hybrid-it-infrastructure-by-2020/
3. https://insights.hpe.com/articles/how-to-make-a-hybrid-it-infrastructure-more-cost-effective-and-agile-1702.html
4. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2015/11/05/idc-releases-top-ten-2016-it-market-predictions/#529390c0f1d9
