Finding your right mix of infrastructure with on-premises IT & public cloud

What’s your best cloud strategy?

We make thousands of decisions every day — 35,000+, if you believe internet sources. If you are a corporate executive or an IT manager, one of the bigger decisions you may be struggling with is whether public cloud is right for your business. And if it is, which applications should you deploy in the public cloud? Which ones should stay on premises?

And what about private cloud and newer technologies you may be hearing about, like hyperconverged and composable infrastructure?

Identifying the best of both public and private clouds

Determining a cloud strategy is a complex decision, one that takes a great deal of research and planning. The good news is that you don’t have to make an either/or decision in terms of public vs. private cloud. Enterprises are moving forward with a variety of cloud strategies, looking for IT solutions that best meet the needs of their workloads.

According to CIO.com, a recent survey by Forrester Research reported, “38% of enterprise decision-makers said they are building private clouds, with 32% procuring public cloud services and the remainder planning to implement some form of cloud technology this year. The hybrid cloud is also heating up, with 59% of respondents saying they are adopting the model.”

Organizations are also deploying those new technologies, hyperconverged and composable infrastructure, because they offer cloud-like capabilities on premises. In addition, hyperconverged and composable infrastructure can provide more control, greater performance, less cost and less risk than many public cloud options. That is why many companies are pulling back from public cloud, and why many more are thinking twice before jumping on board.

Finding the right mix in a simpler hybrid IT environment

As businesses research their hybrid IT options, it’s important for them to take the time to determine their right mix of private, public and traditional IT — what works best for their specific business and workloads. This kind of in-depth analysis can be difficult, so many businesses seek expert advice. A paper published by 451 Research last year, Best Practices for Workload Placement in a hybrid IT Environment, delves into this complex issue, offering insights and recommendations.

Once you have determined your right mix, what comes next in the complex world of hybrid IT? Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is working on a new innovation that will help simplify hybrid IT deployments even further. It’s a new hybrid IT stack initiative that will allow customers to seamlessly compose, operate and optimize the right mix of public, private, hosted and on-premises clouds. Using a single management dashboard with built-in analytics and controls, application developers and IT operators will be able to simply click, compose and consume resources across their hybrid estate. This integrated cloud management and infrastructure solution will deliver more control, lower cost and higher utilization rates.

More choices, more opportunities

Hybrid IT with the right mix of public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises solutions lets businesses place each application or workload in the IT environment where it is best suited. And on the very near horizon, software advances will allow businesses to build and manage applications in one environment and seamlessly move them to another. This really will optimize and unite the best of what on-premises IT and public cloud offer.

About Gary Thome