Wikibon urges enterprise CIOs to adopt a hybrid cloud manifesto
Enterprises are turning to hybrid cloud strategies in response to often-fragmented cloud efforts that have seen one group in the IT organization build private clouds on top of virtualized environments while others move existing applications or write new ones on public cloud infrastructure-as-a-Service platforms. The issue is that neither a private cloud nor a public cloud strategy meets all the varied needs of large IT organizations.
Hybrid cloud, writes Wikibon Cloud Analyst Steve Chambers, is a unification strategy that provides the flexibility to meet the needs of different applications, compliance requirements and groups of users. It also provides the CIO with flexibility to meet the questions of senior management about what IT is doing to take advantage of the latest low cost cloud services.
However, IT needs a unified approach to hybrid cloud. For that, Chambers writes, the CIO needs a Hybrid Cloud Manifesto. This can be visualized as a tree. The entire picture is the hybrid cloud. The trunk is the unified and shared control and data planes. The branches are cloud providers, and the leaves are cloud services.
A hybrid cloud is not a single product – it has no SKU, Chambers writes. No two hybrid clouds are the same. No one vendor or service provider will be able to provide all the answers. The environment is evolving and is likely to include multiple internal clouds servicing different constituencies and multiple external service providers. The hybrid environment will continue to evolve in part to meet new business needs, support new applications and technologies, and meet new regulations. It should be looked upon as a continuous work in progress rather than a fixed architecture.
The manifesto should include why the hybrid cloud is required, a definition of near term success, a list of less clear long-term goals that should be kept in mind, what the hybrid cloud provides to its users, a list of providers, timelines and deliverables.
The full report, “Avoid cloud cul-de-sacs: follow your Hybrid Cloud Manifesto”, is available on the new Wikibon Premium Web site.
© 2015 Wikibon. Used with permission.
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