Overcoming the Challenges of the Shift to Hybrid Cloud

According to IDC, public cloud IT infrastructure spending in the second quarter of 2018 saw a nearly 59% year-over-year increase, more than double the spending growth on private cloud infrastructure during the same period. This shift to cloud, and particularly hybrid infrastructure, is being driven by decision-makers who realize the increasingly critical role hybrid cloud stands to play in enabling a more flexible and agile business without disrupting core business activities.

A U.S.-based financial services company experienced these benefits first-hand when it undertook a large-scale shift to a hybrid cloud infrastructure. We helped the company realize 40% savings in policy operation costs, faster product development and launch speeds, and harmonized processes across the business.

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Key Factors for Adopting Hybrid Cloud 
However, enterprises need to overcome multiple challenges to achieve hybrid cloud benefits. Here are some key factors they must take into account to achieve success in their cloud migration endeavors:

• Ensure alignment with business goals: Businesses need a clear understanding of what they’re trying to achieve when making the move to hybrid cloud. For example, while cost optimization is a key driver, many organizations are still not completely aware of their total spend on cloud. When developing a hybrid cloud roadmap, therefore, organizations need to consider what it will take to create a more unified view of their costs. When business goals are aligned with the roadmap, the organization can ensure its budget, time constraints and business-specific concerns are taken into account.
• Leverage multi-cloud efficiently: Organizations can find it difficult to arrive at the optimum mix of public and private cloud that delivers the best possible security, interoperability, scalability and availability, at minimum cost. Businesses need to conduct an infrastructure evaluation and step-wise migration to assess the optimal multi-cloud environment. By collecting and analyzing performance data (to help plug gaps quickly), keeping track of costs to maximize ROI and driving automated governance – all in sync with their wider organizational goals – businesses can get the most out of their multi-cloud deployment.
• Build the right talent pool. Finding the right talent to facilitate migration and manage the environment post-migration is a key challenge, as is ensuring that the existing workforce is onboard for the changes. Change management, as well as open and regular communication among all stakeholders, and reskilling of resources, are required to navigate the transition.
• Ensure security and compliance. With greater interest than ever in the security of end-customer data, businesses need to fully understand cloud security and ensure compliance with laws and directives issued by regulatory bodies. The traditional, lift-and-shift approach is inadequate when it comes to ensuring compliance. Instead, businesses need to take a holistic view that involves analyzing and tagging data and applications before migration. Factors like governance, data risk management and infrastructure protection can also improve the overall application security posture. By employing existing blueprints and standard templates, businesses can avoid reinventing the wheel, and ensure the security and compliance fundamentals are properly implemented.

Spotlight on Success 
We’re working with a large British multinational energy and utilities company to fully migrate to a hybrid cloud infrastructure by 2021. This involves helping the business improve collaboration, boost workforce productivity and enhance customer experience through application modernization.

Some of the key challenges faced by the company include phasing out legacy systems, operational overhead, a lack of standardization across tools, processes and systems, and establishing a capacity-based pricing model. By employing our HiveCenter automation platform, standardized services and a digital assurance strategy, the company expects to reduce overall administration costs by 50% and realize 40% savings in service costs. The company is already seeing lower TCO and has accelerated product launches by 30%.

With more businesses leveraging cloud capabilities, it’s imperative to chart a path that’s mindful of the challenges of hybrid cloud migration. By mapping out a business strategy that focuses on these elements, businesses can avoid critical failures in their hybrid cloud migration and realize the full array of benefits.

If you'd like to learn more about hybrid cloud, we have gathered some useful information and case studies here. Also check out our previous hybrid cloud blogposts: Mainframes: A Legacy To Discard Or A Key Asset For Core Modernization?, Core Pillars in Your Hybrid Cloud Migration Roadmap, and Forrester’s 4 Questions to Ask Before Adopting Hybrid Cloud.