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Hybridization Has the Potential to Change the Economics of Cloud Computing

I recently got the opportunity to interview Simon Withers, vice president of Global Cloud Product at Sungard Availability. His company, which has been in the managed IT services business for more than 30 years, has seen massive growth in the private cloud services space over the last couple of years, which isn’t surprising. What may be a game changer, however, is the rapid hybridization that is occurring in the cloud computing economy as organizations begin to understand the benefits of blending public and private infrastructure.

Withers said that hybridization is occurring across a number of infrastructure levels, and customers are rapidly realizing the importance of combining the security and customization of the private cloud with the cost savings and efficiencies of public cloud infrastructure.

“What we are seeing at Sungard Availability Services is high growth in private services,” said Withers. “Ironically, at the same time, the majority of our managed cloud implementations are hybrid IT with increasing prevalence in the last twenty-four months.”

As this hybridization takes hold of the cloud computing world, it offers massive opportunities for customers as well as cloud and data center providers. Bridging the gap between public and private cloud infrastructure is, in fact, big business and has the potential to completely change the cloud economy as it currently exists. How service providers and data center operators take advantage of the hybridization trend will be key to the economic shift.

According to a recent Data Center Knowledge article, aligning private infrastructure purchasing and location plans with public cloud procurement can save customers around 20 to 40 percent while offering efficiencies and flexibility. Since the cloud economy is already driven by cost savings, hybridization will most definitely attract customers’ and potential customers’ attention. A recent study from Cloud Connect and the Everest Group backs up both the potential and the reality of hybrid cloud infrastructure, showing that 60 percent of enterprises have adopted or plan to adopt a mix of public and private cloud services and infrastructure.

“Harmonizing private and public cloud deployments allows companies to reap the full benefits of adding a public cloud whilst avoiding the negative impact of multiple environments and additional connectivity costs,” wrote Robert Jenkins (News - Alert), CEO of Swiss IaaS provider CloudSigma, in the Data Center Knowledge piece.

For instance, if public and private infrastructures are both hosted in the same data center, customers can benefit from low latency levels and effectively seamless connectivity. But even if the infrastructures are hosted separately, having a carefully managed connection between the two can offer efficiencies over a solely public solution.

The key, then, to truly capitalizing on the potential of hybridization is proper planning. By aligning public and private cloud procurement strategies, service providers can offer their customers the most cost savings, the quickest and most reliable connectivity and the flexibility they are seeking when setting up customized services.


Edited by Rory J. Thompson