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As organisations navigate the growing complexity of their IT environments, hybrid cloud strategies are inevitable. Modern enterprises often manage diverse systems, such as legacy applications running on private data centres, customer-facing apps hosted on public clouds, and data analytics workloads requiring high-performance computing.
Balancing these diverse needs while keeping costs down and security high has made hybrid cloud models a go-to solution. But it also comes with challenges. Where do you place workload? How do you make integration seamless? Is your data safe?
Here, we explore how businesses can develop effective hybrid cloud strategies to hit the holy trinity: optimum performance, flexibility and control across their IT ecosystems.
The Flexera 2024 State of the Cloud report underscores the rising prominence of hybrid cloud environments, with 73% of organisations employing them as part of their IT strategy. These businesses combine multiple public and private cloud infrastructures to address varying operational demands, ensuring data security and optimising performance.
Key implementations of hybrid cloud include:
For enterprises, hybrid cloud provides unparalleled flexibility, enabling them to host regulatory-compliant workloads in private environments while deploying dynamic, customer-facing applications in the public cloud.
While hybrid cloud adoption is surging, its success depends on overcoming challenges such as infrastructure management and seamless integration. According to Flexera, 36% of organisations now use multiple public and multiple private clouds, creating complex environments that require robust governance frameworks.
To address this complexity, organisations are increasingly adopting multicloud tools. These tools enable centralised visibility and management across hybrid deployments, helping IT teams maintain consistent configurations, security and compliance. Some of these tools include:
Further, managed service providers (MSPs) are playing a growing role in managing public cloud workloads. According to Flexera, 56% of enterprises outsource at least some public cloud operations to MSPs, while small and medium business (SMB) usage of MSPs has increased to 36% from 26% year-over-year. MSPs provide expertise in cloud orchestration, security and cost optimisation, allowing internal IT teams to focus on strategic priorities.
Workload portability between clouds remains equally critical, enabling businesses to dynamically shift resources across environments to optimise performance and costs..
Managing hybrid cloud costs is a top priority, with 59% of organisations ranking cost optimisation as their most important cloud initiative. This emphasis reflects the financial challenges of operating across multiple environments, especially as public cloud usage scales.
Organisations are adopting FinOps (Financial Operations) practices to align spending with business goals.
Organizations struggle to harness the full potential of data scattered across hybrid environments. Data silos hinder productivity, innovation, and cost control, while making data protection complex. HPE simplifies data management and protection across your entire hybrid estate. Download this eBook from HPE to learn more.
Hybrid cloud introduces unique security challenges, requiring businesses to adopt advanced tools and frameworks to protect sensitive data. Flexera’s report highlights the widespread use of security tools (58%), particularly in large enterprises where compliance and governance are critical.
Key security practices for hybrid environments include:
Also, organisations are investing in governance tools, with 46% of respondents prioritising governance to maintain policy enforcement across hybrid clouds.
As hybrid cloud adoption grows, organisations are increasingly considering sustainability in their IT strategies. While only 8% of organisations prioritise sustainability alongside cost optimisation, nearly 48% have implemented carbon tracking initiatives for their cloud usage such as choosing green cloud providers and optimising resource allocation through server consolidation without sacrificing performance.
