IDC predicts that “ by 2020, more than 90% of enterprise IT organizations will commit to multi-cloud architectures,” and that “by 2022, 70% of enterprises will integrate their [public and private clouds]” by adhering to hybrid and multi-cloud management technologies, tools, and processes.

To support innovation and to optimize IT budgets, organizations are developing new applications and moving existing workloads to public clouds. However, for most organizations, full-scale cloud migration is not practical. Enterprise IT needs the ability to deliver a mix of different services, maintain some workloads on site, while still supporting cloud-native development. The best way to achieve this is through hybrid cloud.

What is hybrid cloud?

Hybrid cloud is not an end state but rather a deployment model and a capability. It is not about having a certain percentage of your business on public cloud, a certain percentage on private cloud, and a certain percentage on bare metal; hybrid cloud is the ability to move and adapt storage, computation, networks, and applications based upon the organization’s needs.

The biggest benefit of a hybrid cloud is that it gives businesses the flexibility to choose the optimal solution for each task or workload. With hybrid cloud computing, organizations can keep business- critical or time-critical applications and data on premise while leveraging the public cloud for less critical tasks. If changes in computing demand changes in infrastructure, hybrid cloud enables business to scale their on-premise infrastructure up to the public cloud.

Why hybrid cloud?

With hybrid cloud, businesses can use public and private clouds, giving them the best of both worlds. Private cloud is fully customizable with robust infrastructure management, making it secure by design. Public cloud is highly elastic, offering pay-as-you-go models (minimal CapEx investment) and improved disaster recovery capabilities. Hybrid cloud also ensures maximum utilization of existing IT investments and matches workloads to enterprise requirements, ensuring better return on investment.

Key players in hybrid cloud

Cloud service providers (CSPs) like Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft are accelerating the transition to hybrid cloud by moving legacy systems to advanced cloud services through solutions like Outposts, Anthos, and Azure Stack, respectively. CSPs will remain key players in the hybrid cloud sector, shaping its development with their innovative products and solutions, but these developments will also create new roles for other players:

• Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)
  OEMs are collaborating with CSPs and introducing their own on-premise, software-enabled hybrid products. HPE Ezmeral software portfolio, Dell EMC PowerEdge for hybrid cloud, and EMC partnership for Azure Stack are some examples of these offerings for hybrid cloud transitions.
• Industrial OEMs
  Industrial OEMs are also building their own solutions or collaborating with CSPs. Examples include Schneider Electric EcoStruxure and Siemens Mind Sphere.
• Manufacturers
  Volkswagen and AWS have joined forces to develop the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud: a common, open architecture that connects production to the cloud, addresses a wide variety of manufacturing use cases, and provides a range of business opportunities.
• Telcos
  Hybrid cloud and edge computing services are enabling telecommunication companies to use their networks of cell towers and central offices to build novel solutions that accelerate the deployment of 5G.
• Managed service providers (MSPs)
  Leveraging their skilled work force and management processes, MSPs play a key role in the seamless migration of workloads and support to hybrid cloud environments.

Challenges and solutions

Hybrid cloud does come with its share of challenges. Key challenges include security and compliance management, integration, application portability, components partitioning, and scheduling and execution.

Wipro Engineering NXT offers comprehensive solutions to these and other common challenges:

• Modernization
  Re-engineering legacy architecture to adopt newer cloud-based technologies
• Cloud-native product development
  Using cloud-native design principles like server-less architectures
• Product security
  Designing and integrating security assurance into product lifecycle management for product validation, compliance, and certification
• Product validation
  End-to-end test-solution frameworks for testing functionality and non-functional requirements (NFR) of cloud-based products
• Hybrid cloud management
  Data sync, service discovery, integration, and orchestration across on-premise, private, and public cloud using a single management pane

The future of hybrid cloud

In the coming years, hybrid cloud will likely be a critical element of most CIOs’ IT strategies. Most mid- to-large organizations will look to hybrid cloud to retain control of their core applications and data while still leveraging public cloud for dynamic demands.

However, businesses are not likely to prioritize multi-cloud enablement. Instead, edge computing and seamless integration of on-premise and public cloud systems will determine the direction of the hybrid cloud market. The players or partners who can build industry-leading assets directly relevant to the hybrid cloud will be most successful, capturing a large share of this market.

Interested in knowing more about Wipro’s hybrid cloud solutions? Reach out to us to learn how we can enable your hybrid cloud journey.

Supriyo Das
Vice President
Industrial & Engineering Services, Wipro.

Supriyo’s interest areas include cloud-native product and platforms, IoT, product security, labs as a service, and using these technologies to create verticalized solutions and new business models.

Radhakrishna Singuru
Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Senior Member and Chief Architect Product POD – Software
Engineering Practice, Industrial & Engineering Services, Wipro.

Radhakrishna has nearly 25 years of experience in platform, product, and system software development across multiple industry domains. His areas of interest include cloud and virtualization technologies, edge computing, IoT, blockchain, quantum computing, AI/ML, scalable platforms, SDN, IP networking.