Survey: Hybrid Clouds Hotter Than Ever

A recent ZDNet survey, covered by our sister publication Data Center Management magazine, showed that 70 percent of respondents were using or evaluating a hybrid cloud solution. Hybrid cloud solutions combine on-premise IT infrastructure or private cloud with components accessed in a public cloud. It's no surprise that almost every enterprise systems vendor—IBM, HP, Cisco, Dell, VMware, EMC, Microsoft, etc. —either offers a hybrid cloud solution or is rushing one to market.

The two best reasons these solutions are gaining popularity are cost efficiency and business agility. Even where enterprise data center budgets are expanding, nobody is being given carte blanche to spend on IT infrastructure. So, instead of over-buying or over-provisioning your on-premise IT resources and running them at very low levels of utilization most of the time, you turn to the cloud to access extra capacity when you need it. And you pay for only what you use and when you use it. That’s cost efficiency.

Business agility results from the organization’s ability to turn to the cloud for services, capabilities, or resources it ordinarily doesn’t maintain in-house. If a customer requests a certain capability you can access it through the cloud, making it part of your hybrid cloud. That way, you are able to satisfy the customer and deliver the desired capability fast. Should other customers request the same, you can decide whether to build the capability in-house or continue to deliver it through your hybrid cloud.

The full article is available here: http://www.afcom.com/digital-library/pub-type/dcmmag/enterprise-hybrid-clouds-gaining-popularity/