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A Roadmap to a Hybrid Cloud Architecture for Managing Information

Hybrid cloud is happening. A growing number of organisations have a heterogeneous mix of in-house legacy systems alongside applications that run on disparate cloud services, often sourced from more than one provider.

Using cloud for IT services makes economic sense and gives flexible capacity for when scalability is required to cope with spikes in demand and business growth. However, this complex picture presents challenges for IT leaders who need to keep track of data – the lifeblood of any organisation.

Success in the digital age is dependent on the level of agility in a business to gather, manage and analyse data to support decision-making – whether driven by customer demand, competition, new business opportunities or compliance requirements.

Organisations cannot risk critical data becoming fragmented because of a messy, disparate IT environment. Ensuring data is immediately accessible wherever it resides, that downtime is mimimised, and data meets compliance regulations, are all priorities on the roadmap to a hybrid data architecture.

A new approach
Clive Longbottom, research director at analyst Quocirca, says one way forward is to create a compliance-oriented architecture, which ensures full visibility of data flowing unimpeded across this heterogeneous environment.

“It is based on having a full knowledge of what data and information you have and what it means. To do this, you need to put information at the centre of any architecture,” he says.

He says that historically, the favoured approach has been to create a datawarehouse or a data lake – but that is costly, and rarely works. A new approach to managing data is necessary to make sense of what data exists where, especially with the increasingly common scenario of multiple cloud vendors contracted by one organisation. No organisation can afford to have information blind spots.

The focus on integration becomes even more necessary as different cloud providers are brought in. Today two-thirds (66%) of workloads run on public and private cloud, with 34% remaining on-premise, but that in-house figure is predicted to shrink by 36% over the next year, according to research by information management company Veritas.

This shift to cloud increasingly introduces new players into an organisation. Already nearly three-quarters (74%) of enterprises use two or more cloud infrastructure providers and 23% are using four or more.

“This is the nature of cloud – it is unlikely there will be a one-stop shop that does everything an organisation needs. Therefore, integration, contract management and information management become major issues,” says Longbottom.

   

Managing data across multiple clouds
Any enterprise must be prepared for managing the way multiple clouds interoperate to ensure data is properly protected, managed and leveraged for decision making.

It is becoming increasingly important to keep business services and applications available because organisations are looking to cloud to host mission-critical applications, including CRM and ERP, as reservations about the security of cloud subside.

While some organisations are warier than others, Longbottom believes security fears are often based on misplaced prejudice against public cloud.

“We are still seeing organisations being cautious about putting mission-critical applications in the public cloud. In reality, there are few reasons not to move business critical workloads to the cloud – but that visceral fear from organisations will make it a rather slow process,” he says.

But attitudes are changing, driven by the need to be agile and keep costs down and the realisation that cloud services can be secure. However, if something goes wrong the enterprise must be prepared. Managing for high availability and providing disaster recovery are essential requirements for successful hybrid cloud architecture.

Responsibility rests with the organisation’s IT department to ensure the smooth flow of data within this multi-cloud environment as the various cloud providers cannot be expected to fulfil this function. The IT department must have the right tools and strategies in place to ensure it can do the job because you cannot outsource risk.

For organisations that keep data onsite, disaster recovery (27%) and backup (28%) are cited as key factors by the Veritas survey. Speed to recovery is the critical measure in responding to any failures.

“Use snapshots and object indices to be able to rebuild failed storage nodes as rapidly as possible,” says Longbottom. He advises enterprises to “make sure that business continuity is catered for.”

Enterprises can enjoy the benefits of hybrid cloud and minimise the risk of data blind-spots, downtime and compliance breaches, only if a hybrid cloud architecture allows data to flow freely in a robust environment which meets business expectations of high availability in the digital age.

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