Hybrid cloud? Accelerating digital transformation through hybrid cloud

As the world continues to work relentlessly to ensure business continuity amid the disruption of the pandemic, the rapid pace of digitalisation and the contribution of cloud technology in sustaining organisations big and small cannot be underestimated.

Retail brands with only a brick-and-mortar presence prior to the pandemic have been going online and offering omnichannel experiences to keep up with the dynamic demands of today’s digital-first consumers for convenience and speed. Likewise, F&B stalls and hawkers are leveraging online channels and solutions to maintain their razor-thin margins.

The hybrid cloud is flying high. Mordor Intelligence, a global market research and consulting firm, projected that the market value of the hybrid cloud infrastructure in 2025 would be in the realm of US$128.01bn. That represents a compound annual growth rate of 18.73 per cent from its US$45.70bn market value in 2019. This growing demand for hybrid cloud solutions is driven by a range of factors. As mentioned earlier, rapid digitalisation has increased market competition to a point where it’s not enough for a company to simply deploy its resources in the cloud. Now, companies need a more effective and efficient cloud-based solution that puts the customer first through providing seamless scalability and adaptability. Cutting-edge tech such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are also pushing demand for cloud-edge solutions and data driven intelligence, helping ambitious organisations meet the needs of today’s increasingly dynamic and digitalised marketplace.

In our digital world, it will only become more critical for organisations to keep their momentum going through choosing hybrid cloud solutions to recover and grow. However, a hybrid cloud is a complex entity that requires careful planning, management and optimisation.

A hybrid cloud is a solution that combines a private cloud with one or more public cloud services, with proprietary software enabling communication

between each distinct service. Usually an on-premise solution, it addresses the challenges and limitations of both the public and private cloud, and integrates the advantages of both traditional models.

Challenges

As mentioned above, hybrid clouds are by their very nature, diverse entities that combine the best elements of the public and private cloud. While this diversity provides organisations with an unprecedented level of flexibility that allows them to customise their deployment to meet exact business needs, it also introduces a high level of complexity. Through understanding the challenges associated with a hybrid cloud implementation, companies can manage this complexity and make smart choices - allowing them to strategise and decide on the best hybrid solution for their needs. As such, they may want to consider: Compatibility: Many organisations use a mix of private, public and hybrid cloud solutions. With multiple infrastructures, the incompatibility of tools and processes may lead to service issues and a poor end user experience. Security: With a hybrid cloud solution, an organisation’s corporate data moves between and is accessed across multiple platforms. This high data mobility and platform diversity increases risk, requiring the organisation to put specific policies and procedures in place to address any potential vulnerabilities. Compliance: With everchanging governmental and industrial regulations, compliance is a complex undertaking for online applications and datasets. This complexity is exacerbated for a hybrid cloud deployment, where a company must ensure every element conforms within the regions they operate in.