New Research Shows Hybrid Cloud Takes Center Stage

It’s probably not news to anyone that cloud computing has upended traditional IT and has continued to grow unabated for years.    Many commentators have suggested that the term “cloud” will disappear from our lexicon as it has become completely ubiquitous.  IT professionals must now defend their choice to not put a new workload into a cloud architecture (whether private or public).   The reasons for this are well understood:  cost savings, improved developer productivity, improved agility/innovation, and a trend towards data center consolidation.   The latest global research report SDI, Containers and DevOps – Cloud Adoption Trends Driving IT Transformation sponsored by SUSE and released today, reveals this trend to be a worldwide phenomenon, but there are some changes afoot.

Customer Cloud Strategies Are Evolving

These latest insights suggest that as companies are becoming more comfortable with cloud technologies, they are re-shaping their corporate strategies and completely transforming their IT infrastructure to take advantage of these new capabilities.   While many first experimented with public cloud, they have discovered that a portfolio of cloud capabilities is a complete necessity.   Hybrid cloud has taken center stage with 66% of respondents expecting to move more of their workloads into multi-cloud environments over the next 2 years.   Over the same timeframe, private cloud is expected to grow by 55%.    Interestingly, only 33% expected to be using more public cloud capabilities.

Why Do I Need a Hybrid Cloud Strategy?

Hybrid cloud offers the ability to place workloads on public and private infrastructure depending on where they make the most sense (financially/technically).   Constantly improving orchestration and management suites are making this non-trivial process more palatable.    Some businesses prefer to keep production workloads in their own private cloud for security, performance, reliability, or data sovereignty issues while relying on public cloud for highly variable workloads (especially development).   The latest research reveals that 43% of companies prefer private cloud while 42% prefer a hybrid approach – a fairly even split.

Where Does OpenStack Fit in Your Hybrid Strategy?

When you look at hybrid cloud strategies, the choices have narrowed significantly in the last few years.    There are proprietary solutions that tend to be expensive and less flexible.  In contrast OpenStack has become the de facto standard for private cloud deployments with 1 in 4 companies in this study having already deployed OpenStack in production and a total of 82% of the companies stating they are using or have plans to use it within the next 12 months.   This is not surprising because OpenStack can be used in all aspects of the hybrid cloud including public and private implementations to enable easy migration.   Most new technologies on the leading edge (including containers, DevOps, Kubernetes automation, network function virtualization and analytics) have solutions that are available to those adopting OpenStack as a standard.

Conclusion:   Hybrid Cloud has Moved Beyond the Hype

With a high number of companies implementing or planning to develop a hybrid cloud strategy, we’ve moved beyond the infamous ‘hype-cycle’ to real production on a massive scale.  Thousands of Open Source developers are building next-generation technology on the best open source cloud platform available.  OpenStack has become the integration engine to combine existing workloads/investments with the future of IT transformation.

No matter where you are looking to expand your cloud adoption – public or private SUSE Cloud Solutions can help you get there faster.