Key Advantages of Hybrid Cloud for Digital Transformation
The Flexera State Of The Cloud 2021 report shows that 80% of the surveyed companies which decided to move their services to the cloud over the past year chose the hybrid cloud model. Why do organizations favor this particular strategy?
The cloud computing market is growing extremely fast. Last year, its value reached $192 billion, marking an increase of 35% year-on-year. We are witnessing historic changes that affect every area of our lives and an increasing number of industries from various economy sectors – in other words, a digital transformation in business. The Covid-19 pandemic has already got us used to working remotely, e-visiting a doctor, and remote teaching and learning. Its impact on the boom in e-commerce and the use of cloud services in the healthcare and public services sectors undoubtedly accelerates the digital transformation process. Market studies indicate that the hybrid version of the cloud is particularly popular.
Cloud Services in the Hybrid Model – Key Advantages
Companies choose a hybrid cloud primarily because it is an ideal solution for entities that have their own server infrastructure, but need greater flexibility, scalability, and functionality. This is what the public cloud gives them. The public cloud is also suitable for hosting data and applications that are to be publicly available in the financial and banking sectors, which are also required to store sensitive data on the company's premises. Another advantage of the hybrid model is the possibility of increasing computing power in line with demand. Thanks to the public cloud, the purchase of new equipment is not necessary – it is enough to scale resources up or down, settling consumption as operating costs.
Another issue is an innovative approach to creating applications that are from the very beginning designed for use in the cloud. Today’s applications are built on the basis of microservices, which in turn are based on containers, while the orchestrators (planning systems) such as Kubernetes allow them to be managed and automated. This new, architecturally “lighter” approach to application development is the driving force behind the migration to the cloud. The data from the Flexera report come as no surprise to us, because we have been seeing similar trends for several years in our data centers, where clients use the tools offered by the Comarch Infraspace Cloud.
From IaaS and PaaS to Disaster Recovery – how is the Cloud Services Market changing?
When we created Comarch's first cloud offer for customers, the largest sales were related to infrastructure as a service products (IaaS) in terms of computing power, disk space and network bandwidth. Currently, the most popular – apart from classic instances of virtual machines – are platform as a service (PaaS), Kubernetes, database and backup as a service. Customers appreciate our platform primarily because it is based on open-source solutions. This avoids vendor-locking, so customers are not dependent on a specific supplier.
Recent events related to Russian aggression in Ukraine have increased requests for disaster recovery as a service. Thanks to the fact that we operate in as many as 15 regions of the world, we are able to provide georedundancy of resources for our clients' environments. Disaster recovery therefore becomes a critical factor in ensuring the guaranteed availability of the service. At Comarch, we guarantee high quality of services thanks to the relevant SLA (service level agreement). Our experience in managing hybrid environments helps our clients to adapt the cloud to their needs.
Less Administration, More Ecology thanks to the Cloud Services
In the above-mentioned report, approximately 63% of companies admitted that they use the services of cloud providers related to the management of their environment. In the future, this trend will strengthen for several important reasons. Most importantly, customers can save more time and resources for operational work. They no longer waste the potential of their specialists on daily administrative tasks, but use it in activities related to digital transformation. Another factor is the responsibility for the functioning and maintenance of the environment, which passes from the customer to the service provider.
Environmental factors motivating customers to choose the cloud for digital transformation are also important. Regulations impose an obligation on entrepreneurs to increase efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. Data from Pike Research, a company researching the green technology market, indicate that the adoption of cloud computing by 2020 could have led to a 38% reduction in energy consumption in global data centers, and further development in this direction will result in an approx. 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the next five years. In the future, ecology will become one of the main levels of competition, with companies competing in terms of reducing the negative impact on the natural environment. This direction will only contribute to the further development of the cloud services market, which we will be constantly monitoring.