advertisement
GlobalData: Success of hybrid cloud lies in ability to automate, orchestrate workloads
Organizations are increasingly adopting hybrid cloud strategy to improve the way they run their business and deliver new services to…
Organizations are increasingly adopting hybrid cloud strategy to improve the way they run their business and deliver new services to customers. As enterprises mix public and private IT resources, the real challenge lies in the ability to automate and orchestrate workloads, according to leading data and analytics company, GlobalData.
A typical enterprise will integrate more Software as a Service (SaaS) providers with public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Major telecom firms across the Asia-Pacific region have spotted this trend; and are building aggregation hubs to enable their customers to connect to third-party cloud providers.
These carrier-neutral interconnects, in turn, provide access to the co-location facilities supporting the necessary cross-connections between cloud providers and service providers. While customers can look forward to a range of competitive options for connectivity and services; the management layer is the weakest link and the most important.
advertisement
Dustin Kehoe, Service Director of APAC at GlobalData, comments:
“It is not just about how many connected clouds a service provider wants to deliver for its customer, but also the ability to deliver one platform that can integrate compute, network and storage with next-gen security, application management (both legacy and mobile/cloud-native) and service management into a common, highly orchestrated cloud workspace.”
This is where a robust management platform plays a crucial role in automating manual tasks and scripts; including configuration, provisioning and management of services through a template-based approach.
A robust management platform will integrate different aspects of service management; such as incident response, capacity, availability and SLAs, through to change management and the activation of a service catalogue to guide user consumption. The management platform should look at cloud as one that is being closely linked to a broader ‘software-defined’ infrastructure encompassing campus, branch and data center networks.
Kehoe adds: “IT automation sets out to deliver the common architecture for both legacy IT and net-new cloud-native applications; while software-defined infrastructure will provide businesses with the ability to mix and match cloud deployment environments; with requirements on performance, security and compliance.
advertisement
“The real opportunity is around the ability to make the configuration, management, and security of virtual environments easier. The first service provider who can offer such a solution; across a mixed estate of vendors and cloud platforms will be well on their way of solving an industry challenge. Integrating networks and clouds as one logical software-defined domain is the starting point.”
CIO East Africa to host Cloud & Security Summit
CIO East Africa is scheduled to hosts its inaugural Cloud and Security Summit from March 28 2018 – March 29 2018. The summit will offer an immersive platform; where the sector IT leaders from both the supply and demand side can meet and interact. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to position your business as a market leader.
Click here to learn more about the event.