Spend on IT for small and medium sized businesses is now a big cost consideration.

Overall, spending on IT by small (<100 employees) and medium-sized (100–999 employees) businesses (SMBs) worldwide will reach USD1.4 trillion in 2024. Spending on infrastructure will account for approximately 20% of this total.

It’s expected that spending on cloud solutions will outpace that o on-premises options, but SMBs will continue to rely on on-premises hardware due to the greater perceived security and control over data.

It’s for this reason many SMBs are increasingly being attracted to hybrid cloud (a mix of public cloud and private cloud, which often includes legacy infrastructure), which combines the best of both worlds: it offers the security of private cloud and the versatility of public cloud.

In the future, it’s likely SMBs will require additional support as the hybrid IT environment becomes more complex, thereby creating opportunities for managed service providers (MSPs). Vendors and partners should offer economical packaged services and products to SMBs.

Cloud technologies have become an important part of IT strategies in the last decade. As SMBs digitise their businesses, they’re choosing to use only public cloud, only private cloud (on-premises and hosted) or hybrid cloud.

A hybrid environment offers the security of private cloud while running front-end applications such as productivity tools, project management and CRM in the public cloud.

So, what’s to come?

There’s currently a shift towards next-gen cloud-native applications developed in agile and DevOps approaches, many enterprises are still using a number of traditional applications, including systems of record (ERP, CRM, etc.).

Here, some applications are suited for public cloud and others are better on prem. Moreover, the emergence of containers and serverless methods can result in higher degrees of portability and abstraction. These requirements mean that from an infrastructure perspective, a hybrid model is necessary.

Yet several pain points exist – changes in business processes, increased complexity of multi-vendor management, data movement/migration limitations, data governance across a multi-cloud environment, and above all, additional security and data sovereignty.

If enterprise IT is to support digital business in the longer run, these challenges must be overcome by a robust hybrid-cloud strategy. Only then will it be possible to efficiently deliver the applications and services and meet business needs.

There certainly could be various combinations to deliver a hybrid strategy. Some of the key must-haves include:

• A clear, multi-public cloud enablement platform
• Modernised on-premises and private cloud environments to meet the operational capabilities similar to those on the public cloud
• Strong monitoring and orchestration capabilities, heavily automated and have real-time operational visibility while providing consistency across different environments
• Strong integration capabilities across multiple environments and a multi-tool ecosystem
• A next-gen operating model that allows for extensibility into the growing trends around DevSecOps, insights-oriented, AI-driven, Edge and IoT disruptions that will also mandate the need for new set of infrastructure KPIs and metrics
• All-new development that takes advantage of the portability of containers and microservices, and leverages serverless architecture where possible
• Stringent security models that adhere to all network and data compliance requirements.

For businesses looking at transformation, driving innovation or future-proofing themselves, hybrid cloud is certainly a strong route to take. The industry is in a state of maturity today, as challenges involving designing, architecting, building, and operating a hybrid setup have already been addressed. The hybrid vision should look at the next three to five years, which implies close alignment with future business and technology initiatives.

Talk to Viatek today to learn how we can help you find the right hybrid cloud solution to meet your business needs with HPE SimpliVity powered by Intel^® Xeon Scalable processors and Intel^® Optane SSD.

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