As digital transformation is becoming a necessity for today’s agile enterprises, cloud computing is forced to scale up in tandem, providing the strong foundation required for successfully revolutionising legacy IT systems.
As per Gartner’s recent survey, for more than a third of the organisations, cloud investments now feature in their top three business priorities. Latest update from IDC forecasts public cloud services spending in Asia Pacific to be valued at $26 billion in 2019, an increase of 47.1% over 2018. What is primarily driving cloud adoption in the region is the focus on improving business agility and speed. Several smart cities initiatives in the region have also catalysed the government to revamp their existing IT systems and adopt cloud services.
As cloud adoption is becoming mainstream within enterprises of all sizes, what remains a point of uncertainty for many is what type of cloud they should opt for: private or public? Or hybrid?
This is largely determined by the type of workload the organisation is looking to migrate to the cloud, the IT resources it has, the type of data it must deal with, and increasingly, the desire to use the cloud as the foundation for a complete organisation-wide digital transformation strategy, spanning all lines of business. However, choosing the right cloud platform takes time.
While there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach, organisations are increasingly realising the value of a hybrid cloud solution to address the challenges of disparate IT environments. The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index report revealed that enterprises in Singapore are making a paradigm shift away from traditional data centres to hybrid cloud.
The region is expected to witness a drastic upsurge in this adoption in the next two years – the survey predicts a rise from 18% to 46% during this period. This will position Singapore as the leading nation in hybrid cloud adoption.
Still, the popularity of certain private, public or hybrid clouds is not always determined by the cloud type itself but by the challenges that organisations face in deploying and managing cloud infrastructure:
High value of data
The type of cloud that makes sense for a business depends on the size of the organisation, given the resources needed to deploy and manage the new IT set-up. Smaller companies and start-ups often opt for public cloud because they have little to no legacy IT to migrate. While most mid-sized companies with a fair amount of legacy IT, but limited IT resources, often opt for ready-made public or fully-managed private clouds.
Regardless of organisation size, the key questions should be: What type of data do I have? And what is its value? A public cloud is often not suitable for highly valuable, sensitive, business-critical data – even in small businesses. Despite this, almost 83% of professionals surveyed by McAfee said they “store some or all of their sensitive data in the public cloud.” However, there is a growing awareness of having the right security skills within organisations to address this concern.
Security of valuable data
Data security is, and will remain, a major factor in an enterprise’s cloud strategy too. It is not an afterthought anymore but integrated from the design phase itself. It boils down to making a call between what is an acceptable amount of convenience versus an acceptable amount of risk when it comes to access to applications and data.
That is why a highly-secure, fully-managed private cloud that gives the Chief Information Officer (CIO) maximum control over applications and data, and the ability to mix the private cloud set-up with public and on-premise systems, is often the best option.
Cookie cutter or customised?
If a public cloud is chosen as the best way forward, and if the number of applications and volume of data is small, the process can be simple. But often for medium and large sized enterprises, cloud migration is a complex process that takes time, so they seek the support of a technology partner. Here, the seamlessness of the migration itself, and especially the on-boarding process that follows, is critical.
For large organisations with operations spread across geographies, the cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all nature of a public cloud can be too inflexible. While a customised private cloud takes longer to implement, it is an investment that more and more organisations are willing to make, given the scalability benefits it brings and the control it gives to the CIO.
The right cloud advisor, who understands the company’s business needs, analyses the workloads and maps them to the right cloud environment, can help the CIO ensure seamless migration to the new IT set-up.
Dealing with disruption in different clouds
With public clouds, the cloud provider is fully in charge of managing all aspects of the infrastructure and ensuring that customers have 24/7 access to applications and data. In most cases these cloud providers have huge resources and teams, all dedicated to keeping the cloud up and running and safeguarding revenues for the business.
When it comes to internal private clouds, it’s up to the enterprise to fully manage it. So, the organisations who own IT team investigates the causes for any downtime, breaches or other issues and comes up with an appropriate solution. However, while a private cloud gives the company complete control over the entire cloud infrastructure, it may not have the resources to deal with issues as quickly as needed, leading to delay in resolving issues and getting the private cloud functioning again.
That is why companies opting for a self-managed, internal private cloud should always consider the following questions: How long can we cope with cloud downtime? Do we have the resources for a quick recovery?
To ensure that any issues can be resolved before they even lead to downtime, many organisations are now moving to fully-managed private clouds for 24/7 accessto a public cloud-like army of IT experts while ensuring that the CIO maintains security, data and application sovereignty and maximum control over the IT infrastructure.
Cloud migration is a complex issue, enterprises need to consider the value of the data being moved to the cloud and the state of their legacy IT. Businesses consider partnering with a private cloud provider that can give them 360-degree visibility and control over this critical infrastructure.
However, a successful migration is only the start. With the right partner, the CIO can harness the new hybrid cloud infrastructure for digital transformation initiatives across the organisation – today and in the future.
After all, in today’s digital world fuelled by data, the IT infrastructure is the growth engine of the enterprise.
