One of the few unexpected benefits of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the acceleration of digital initiatives, and not just the customer-facing elements of it, but the modernisation of internal systems and processes.
If prior to 2020 there was dilly-dallying to what extent enterprises will shift part of their IT needs into the cloud, the mass exodus to remote working or work from anywhere has forced enterprises to accelerate cloud adoption.
"A public cloud platform provides enterprises with an agile, scalable, and cost-effective IT infrastructure that supports their business processes. However, the public cloud is not necessarily an appropriate option for all types of workloads. As such, some enterprises are choosing to keep certain workloads on-premises – using an in-house data centre – or on private clouds. This approach helps them achieve better performance, 24/7 availability, enhanced security, and greater compliance with regulations," said Jyoti Lalchandani, group vice president & regional managing director for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa, IDC.
Still, not everything has moved to the cloud. Not everything is expected to, at least in the near term. So while media and analysts may have been predicting large swats of enterprises shifting lot stock and barrel into the cloud, the reality is that many core systems will remain on-premise and in private clouds.
The result is the proliferation of hybrid clouds. Now, contrary to marketing hype, managing an enterprise in a hybrid cloud is not as easy as it seems. Most public clouds are built on proprietary systems. CIOs and IT teams still have responsibility for managing all the infrastructure they use – on-prem, in the cloud and everything in between.
Click on the PodChat player and listen to Gajun Ganendran, CTO & Technical Leader, IBM public cloud APAC, lend his expertise on the topic of managing and securing hybrid clouds. Among the questions he will cover in the dialogue are:
- Define hybrid IT management?
- In a hybrid IT environment comprising – on-prem, private, public and multi-cloud – what are the biggest challenges for infrastructure administrators and managers?
- If I want to redesign/re-architect my IT infrastructure from a pure on-prem to a hybrid architecture, what are must considerations of the redesign?
- What is the most efficient way to manage such a setting (as described in Q2)?
- What skills will IT need for the effective/efficient management of such an infrastructure setup?
- Given the likelihood that some applications (and data) will remain on-prem and accessible from any device, how can IT managers facilitate seamless management of such a complex setup without straining available staffing resources?
- How do I future proof the management of this hybrid architecture?
