The Hybrid Cloud

Keeping it easy this post. It'll be just a small recap to build some tension for the next few posts. In the last two posts, I talked a little about the private and public cloud, and it is always difficult to write everything with the right words. So, I totally agree with most of the comments made, and I wanted to make sure a couple of them were addressed in this post. Let’s start with the cloud in general:

A lot of you said that the cloud is just a buzzword (or even just someone else’s computer).

I know it’s funny, and I know people are still trying to figure out what cloud is exactly, but for now we (our companies and customers) are calling it cloud. And I know we techies want to set things straight, but for now let’s all agree on calling it cloud, and just be done with it (for the sake of all people that still see the computer as a magical box with stardust as its internal parts, and unicorns blasting rainbows as their administrators.)

The thing is, I like the comments because I think posts should always be written as conversation starters. We are here to learn from each other, and that’s why we need these comments so badly.

The private cloud (or infrastructure) is a big asset for many of the companies we work for. But they pay a lot of money to just set up and maintain the environment, where the public cloud just gives them all these assets and sends a monthly bill. Less server cost, less resource cost, less everything, at least that’s what a lot of managers think. But as a couple of the comments already mentioned, what if things go south? What if the provider goes bankrupt and you can't access your data anymore?

In the last couple of years, we've seen more and more companies in the tech space come up with solutions, even for these kinds of troubles. With the right tools, you could make sure you’re data is accessible, even if your provider goes broke and the lights go out. Companies like Zerto, Veeam, Solarwinds, VMware and many more are handing you tools to use the clouds as you want them, while still being in control and able to see what is going on. We talked about DART and SOAR, and these are very important in this era and the future ahead. We tend to look at the marketing buzz and forget that it's their way of saying that they often don't understand half of the things we do or say, and the same goes for a lot of people outside the IT department. In the end they just want it KISS, and that where a word like "cloud" comes from. But let's go back to hybrid.

So what is hybrid exactly? A lot of people I talk to are always very outspoken about what they see as hybrid cloud. They see the hybrid cloud as the best of both worlds, as private and hybrid clouds combined. For me, the hybrid cloud is much more than that. For me, it can be any combination, even all public, but shared among multiple providers (multi-cloud anybody?!? ), or private and public clouds on-premises, and so on. In the end, the cloud shouldn't matter; it should just be usable.

For me, the hybrid solution is what everybody is looking for, the one ring to rule them all. But we need something software-defined to manage it all.

That's why my next post will be about the software-defined data center. It's another buzzword, I know, but let's see if we can learn a bit more from each other on where the IT world is going to, and how we can help our companies leverage the right tools to build the ultimate someone else’s computer.

See you in Vegas next week?!?