For many businesses, the choice to migrate to off- or on- premises is an important decision that can affect the customer experience and how the organisation operates. Due to its flexibility, enterprises in the ASEAN region are opting for cloud adoption.
Yet, it’s important to understand the choices available in order to digitally transform your business, and to understand that this will not be an easy one-time process.
For the most part, the premise of opting for cloud computing is enticing due to its ability to scale businesses, store data, save money and improve agility. Cloud’s functionality and flexibility permits enterprises to use this to their advantage as it enables remote work and to change workflow, which helps with better decision making.
However, before a business makes a decision, it’s important to understand the difference between the different software available to major and minor enterprises.
For example, on-premise software refers to when a company installs and runs applications on a computer which is managed internally, requiring no further support from external parties.
Its security and ability to be managed without the risk of external disturbances has been a great advantage for organisations in certain industries, such as financial services. However, as organisations exponentially digitise, businesses will need to adapt – or risk falling behind.
Enter cloud computing.
Cloud computing comes with a slew of benefits as it helps increase collaboration and offers faster performance. While suitable for certain industries, the complexity of IT security has made organisations uncertain about fully adopting cloud computing, citing factors such as control, deployment, security and compliance.
Here, we will be exploring the ways a business can adapt hybrid cloud computing, and the key considerations that organisations have to take into account before making a decision.
Hybrid cloud is the way forward
It is important to examine the needs of your organisation and how a cloud strategy can add value to the business. Understanding the workload of your business will allow you to efficiently manage systems across the hybrid environment and allow you to easily manage them.
In addition, when choosing a cloud provider, it is essential to ensure that the services that they offer are in tandem with your business’s cloud strategy. This allows you to grow your business without the worry of having to find additional providers for support.
Security is no doubt one of the top considerations that many companies think about when it comes to cloud computing. It is exactly why the hybrid cloud will provide organisations with the sense of security when it comes to protecting their assets.
Through this split environment, it allows you to keep high-risk information in on-premise software, yet still gives the agility and speed of cloud computing. When choosing a suitable cloud provider, it helps to assess what their risk management and compliance process is like and how they can effectively implement security measures.
Choosing a suitable provider
When choosing the right provider for your hybrid cloud, one needs to also take a step back to understand the full range of services they provide. Make sure that your preferred provider already has the technology to support your current on-premise infrastructure and ensure that they have the right migrating tools to allow for an easy on-boarding process, yet still allows you to manage the systems without the need for external personnel.
For example, we helped to set up a hybrid cloud infrastructure for a Chinese Radio & TV University that was trying to overcome its limitations of public cloud storage. As a school, security was an important factor since they dealt with personal details of its students, teachers and handled teaching resources online.
Initially on a core private cloud system, our hybrid cloud solution provided privacy while promoting digital acceleration that allowed the school to develop user-friendly teaching apps in a shorter time frame.
Some of the main outcomes achieved were significant savings, especially since all of their learning resources were no longer sent to its backup system. In addition, the university had more data to support their future needs, and made access to important information easy and secure.
With great outcomes like this, it is easy to see that hybrid cloud is here to stay, and is likely to continue to develop and grow over the coming years. With the direction that the industry is moving towards, we are likely to see more enterprises running on cloud, leading to more developers to deal with the influx of resources.
In addition, with the promise of 5G looming, the distribution of apps operating on the cloud will only continue to grow. For businesses still on the fence, the time is now, because the switch to cloud is not an easy task, and is expected to take from a few months to a few years to be fully implemented into your organisation.
KC Phua is Technical Director for Data Management & Protection, APAC at Hitachi Vantara
