While companies are looking to adopt hybrid cloud computing, many remain unclear on the fundamentals.
This is according to Stefan Diedericks, alliance and channel director at Oracle SA, who notes organisations today are looking at hybrid cloud to give them flexibility, agility and investment protection.
Hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment which uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud and public cloud services with orchestration between the two platforms.
In an ITWeb survey in partnership with VMware, private cloud emerged as the top cloud model being used by the survey respondents at 34%, hybrid came in second at 29% and public cloud came in third at 16%.
Diedericks believes organisations should look at hybrid cloud in terms of strategic drivers to their business growth.
He says big data, the Internet of things and mobility are trends that are driving an explosion in the use of true hybrid clouds.
Organisations are under pressure to improve quality of service while reducing cost - as a result, they are moving toward more advanced levels of IT infrastructure driven by innovation such as hybrid cloud, adds Diedericks.
He points out for a business to operate in a hybrid cloud environment, it must be cognisant of what it requires.
It is vital for managers to analyse relevant medium- to long-term trends and other factors that will affect the adoption of hybrid cloud and then make the investment decision that suits the company, he says.
Organisations that are adopting hybrid cloud should make sure the cloud provider's infrastructure will meet and scale its long-term business demands, notes Diedericks.
It is important that environments that absorb cloud are able to drive more transformational innovation and new revenue, he adds.
As the hybrid cloud continues to gain traction within the enterprise, the data management elements in different parts of a hybrid cloud must be connected and work together to form a coherent, integrated, and interoperable system, says George Kurian, executive vice-president of product operations at NetApp.
This "data fabric" enables data to be consistently managed, transported seamlessly from one part of the cloud to another, adds Kurian.
It also enables enterprises to apply consistent policies and services to the data in the hybrid cloud regardless of the application, technology or cloud infrastructure provided, he notes.
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