IBM – How to Master the Hybrid Cloud Era?

Rodrigo Ganimi, Hybrid Cloud Services Leader at IBM Consulting Latin America

In times when data is a company’s most valuable asset, they are faced with the need to run multiple clouds from different vendors, on- and off-premise, which represents a great challenge for the management, analysis and protection of their data. In fact, nearly 97% of organizations operate on more than one cloud and the average enterprise is expected to have 10 clouds by 2023.

Hybrid cloud is the new reality. Many organizations are evolving from single, private computing environments to public, interactive ones to simplify processes, innovate faster and drive business results.

But this transformation is more than just a decision, it’s a complex process with hurdles that leaders must master if they want to be part of the change.

To help them overcome these hurdles, the IBM Institute for Business Value assessed five
common challenges that stand in the way of mastering hybrid cloud and recommendations for unlocking business transformation and innovation. They are:

  1. The architecture:The pressures of rapid deployment lead to shortcuts, making everything more complex and costly, as well as less secure and effective. To meet this challenge, it is key to define the “sweet spot” where the IT roadmap of hybrid cloud development matches the direction of the business, as this speeds up the process and improves results. Then we can implement a single integrated hybrid cloud platform and application architecture that is fully aligned with the business.
  2. The people and operations challenge:Empowering teams with the skills and expertise they need is crucial because not everyone is trained in cloud-native ways, which can lead to cumbersome processes. By organizing the work structure to respect each role in cloud operations, better results will be achieved. In addition, empowering a “Cloud Center of Excellence” will allow us to bring the hybrid cloud operating model to life and accelerate deployment.
  3. The security challenge: If the cloud – even just one – is not properly integrated, we can expose ourselves to new security risks. Companies must harmonize their security posture so that capabilities and procedures across the hybrid cloud are consistent. In turn, creating visibility through a single dashboard allows us to take quick action on threats, and if we add to this the use of AI, we can accelerate the detection and prediction of vulnerabilities to take preventative measures and take action.
  4. The financial challenge: A poorly integrated and operationally flawed cloud implementation will bring headaches for security professionals, the business and, of course, the finance team. Those companies that master the hybrid cloud manage all their costs through a single view and capture opportunities to optimize budgets, improve workflows and reallocate resources. The finance team is then focused on improving cloud investments and returns, not on solving poor implementation issues.
  5. The partner ecosystem: Undoubtedly, partners have become especially important in recent times, helping us to accelerate development, offer better services and products to customers, be more efficient and innovate faster. To take advantage of the hybrid cloud approach it will be key to join with the most strategic people for our organization and create a kind of “exclusive table”, focused on not losing sight of the business and ensuring that the above points are met, without delays and with controlled costs.

Mastering the hybrid cloud platform is essential to achieving greater business value and better service delivery and customer experiences. The journey doesn’t have to be daunting or fraught with complexities. Understanding the specific challenges and establishing a strategy to overcome them will help ease the path to mastering hybrid cloud.