As a concept, Hybrid IT is a compelling industry theme that resonates with enterprises. IDC and Seagate’s Data Age 2025 report projects that 49 percent of all data will reside in public cloud environments by the end of that year. With the shock of the pandemic affecting many systems over the last two years, businesses are facing the challenge of how to move workloads to public, private, or hybrid clouds—the foundations underpinning the concept of ‘Hybrid IT’. This challenge became top of mind for enterprise CIOs and has led many to consider the value proposition of outsourcing to professionally managed data centers.
When data center operators establish new hybrid IT partnerships, key capabilities include enabling customers to scale their operations easily with a self-service approach, access to flexible interconnection, a need for highly reliable application performance, and access to managed services.
It’s rarely possible simply to cut the cord to the internal data center. Applications and processes are tied to it, and they aren’t easily moved. It can be necessary to use both on-premises and cloud services for a period of time until some level of transition to the cloud is complete. This transition process raises the question of whether enterprises want all or part of their IT systems to migrate to the cloud. An all-cloud approach is not an arrangement that works for every organization. Many small companies start ‘cloud-first’ and end up migrating back into hybrid IT environments as monthly cloud costs mount.
The right mix of on-premises, cloud, and server colocation can make life easier and more efficient. That mix looks different for every business, but ultimately, a hybrid environment can provide the control associated with an in-house IT environment together with the benefits of deploying in the cloud – and help accelerate the delivery of services and applications.
