EMBARK ON ORGANIZATION HYBRID CLOUD MIGRATION JOURNEY

Before cloud computing, organizations had no other option but to store data and run their software applications within a traditional IT infrastructure setting—a form of centralized computing that is comprised of on-premises data centers, servers, networking hardware and enterprise software applications. As business processes became increasingly digitized, such on-premises setups required increasing amounts of compute power and physical space, which strained operations and increased costs as organizations had to purchase and self-manage all of their infrastructure in-house.

With the advent of enterprise-level cloud computing, organizations could embark on cloud migration journeys and outsource IT storage space and processing power needs to public clouds hosted by third-party cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM Cloud, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

Today, these providers offer virtualized resources ranging from on-demand, ready-to-use software applications to individual virtual machines (VMs) to complete enterprise-grade infrastructures and development platforms. Cloud-based managed services include infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS). Public clouds operate on a pay-per-use basis, providing a cost-effective solution that limits wasting resources.

Private clouds—computing environments where all hardware and software resources are dedicated to and accessible only by a single organization—emerged primarily as a way for businesses to maintain strict control over IT infrastructure so they could protect sensitive data and meet privacy or regulatory compliance requirements. A private cloud setup is usually hosted in an organization’s on-premises data center. Still, it can also be hosted on a cloud service provider’s infrastructure or rented infrastructure in an offsite data center.

Hybrid cloud technology evolved out of the need to support and integrate computing, storage and services in different computing environments for more capacity and improved overall performance. Hybrid cloud seamlessly combines public cloud, private cloud and on-premises infrastructure into a single, flexible solution that offers portability for running applications and workloads.

Today, a hybrid multicloud approach has emerged that combines two or more public cloud services from different vendors and a private cloud environment. This modern infrastructure model enables cloud native application development (for example, microservices) and uses a container orchestration platform (for example, Kubernetes, Docker Swarm) to automate the deployment of apps across all clouds. When effectively designed, a hybrid multicloud architecture can provide businesses with high-performance storage, a low-latency network, security and zero downtime.

The IBM report Mastering Hybrid Cloud indicated that a hybrid cloud approach yields 2.5x more value than a single public cloud alone. By incorporating workload portability, orchestration and management across multiple computing environments, hybrid cloud architecture delivers the flexibility, scalability and security businesses need to innovate and remain agile. As a leader in hybrid cloud solutions, IBM is helping companies harness the many advantages and benefits of hybrid cloud while overcoming the complexities of modern IT infrastructure to create a successful strategy.