Agility and innovation-led digital transformation have been the catchphrases for CIO’s over the past decade. But recent times have unveiled the pitfalls of directionless speed, and the increased security exposure of organizations with expanded digital processes.
Digital transformation over the last two decades has seen empires built and fall. While every CIO strives to create the perfect IT infrastructure to drive business growth, the definition of ‘perfect’ for each business differs.
This is where the concept of ‘hybrid’ has worked its way into IT infrastructure, serving as the perfect blend of old with new.
In the last few years, cloud computing in particular has emerged as the panacea for expanding organizational reach while balancing efficiency and profitability. There is enough research to indicate why the benefits of cloud are compelling.
We live in the era where data is expanding at exponential rates and the need for instant, real-time access, across multiple geographies, is at an all-time high. To keep up with this new on-demand economy, enterprises will need to explore the cloud more closely and plan migration.
Offering scalability, efficiency, expandable storage capabilities, every organization, big or small, can take advantage of cloud computing in some form or another including models like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or a Software as a Service (SaaS).
Unpacking hybrid IT
Despite the strong case in favor of cloud, enterprises have been reluctant to adopt a ‘cloud-only’ approach, this could be due to the perceived lack of control, or the inability to bridge business strategy with digital objectives and a largely on-premise existing infrastructure.
As a result, choosing the middle-ground with Hybrid IT offers enterprises the opportunity to operate mixed environments and incorporate public and private clouds along with core on-premise physical systems.
So, what makes Hybrid IT a model of choice? In a nutshell, the three key forces drive the shift to hybrid IT:
a. Organization’s need to maintain control of data.
b. Cost effectiveness of software-as-a-service and storage-as-a-service models.
c. The need for IT to respond with agility to changing business needs.
And when we drill down deeper, the advantages multiply are manifold. Here are the top 7:
- The changing role CIOs: Functional to Strategic and Transformational
Today’s CIO’s have their hands full - embracing innovation to advance agility in meeting changing customer expectations/needs. At the same time, they need to rapidly evolve benchmarks of service, while balancing competitiveness and financial viability.
In fact, IDG’s 2019 State of the CIO Survey finds that while CIO’s today, are juggling their multiple roles, strategic and transformational roles are expected to overtake their functional responsibilities in the next three years.
This growing reliance on IT leadership to help steer the future course is driving CIO’s to create a strategic roadmap with Hybrid IT, combining traditional IT, managed services, and private & public cloud, making the business agile and scalable enough to meet ever-changing business demands.
- Shifting gears: Accommodating the need for speed
In an increasingly digital global market, speed is key. The introduction of cloud services has allowed enterprises to respond more quickly to customer needs and requests, and roll out new products and services. While cloud services enable faster delivery, hybrid IT allows organizations to tap into this speed without compromising on key existing IT systems and security.
- The best of both worlds
Adapting to a never-ending continuum of changing customer expectations has been challenging task for most CIOs. A hybrid solution allows companies the opportunity to tailor services - cloud and on-premises - according to its functions and needs in order to ensure security and predictability while minimizing costs.
- Keeping secrets: Hybrid IT as a way to ensure security
For organizations that deal with sensitive data, a hybrid model has become the go to IT solution. By localizing sensitive data and storing it on private cloud servers, it allows them to stay on par without compromising on security. Ultimately, not all companies handle sensitive data, but for those that do, a private cloud system to house data safely and efficiently is critical. A hybrid IT model can, therefore, enable them to be faster, more competitive, and innovate without compromising security.
- Aim for the sky: A cost-effective means to scale
Driving growth while minimizing costs is on every enterprise’s agenda. A hybrid system gives smaller companies and organizations a cost-effective means to scale and extend their IT capabilities. Expanding on-premises infrastructure is prohibitively expensive while a hybrid cloud gives a company access to unlimited resources on demand. The elasticity of public cloud services mean enterprises are only charged for services rendered, meaning companies can cut costs with little to no impact on efficiency.
- Disaster recovery: Accounting for worst-case scenarios
Disaster recovery is a key benefit of hybrid IT. A public cloud gives an organization a cost-effective means to create a backup database to tackle a possible disaster. The flexibility of cloud-based storage and computing resources allows an organization to prepare itself for a fraction of the cost as compared to on-premises solutions.
- Hybrid IT as a modernization strategy
For CIO’s, Hybrid IT serves as the foundation for digital transformation objectives. It provides CIO’s with the flexibility to mix, match, and deploy the right combination of practices, technologies, infrastructure and services.
The goal of hybrid IT is, as a Harvard Business Review study put it, “to get the right data to the right place at the right time consistently and securely in order to deliver a good experience to users or customers.”
And with the many benefits it brings, Hybrid IT is evolving beyond being a functional necessity, to one that is core to the broader modernization strategy.