A survey from 451 Research sheds light on the experiences and opinions of today’s IT practitioners — why they are choosing hybrid cloud and the best way to implement it.
Leading IT research and advisory company, 451 Research, recently surveyed 1,000 enterprise IT decision-makers to gain insights into their experiences using public and private cloud.[i] The survey respondents were intimately involved with cloud technology – C-level executives and IT managers who were in the thick of things, directly responsible for cloud implementations. And their responses reveal surprising insights into what is happening today … and what enterprises need as they move forward.
I’ve highlighted below some key takeaways and statistics from this report, Having Your Cake and Eating it Too. Bringing the public cloud experience to the on-premises datacenter.[ii]
The elephant in the room: public cloud concerns with security, privacy, compliance
According to the survey, a large number of respondents are pleased with their experiences in the public cloud; the most appealing factors are scalability and provisioning. The most complaints revolve around startup costs, utilization, and cost reduction.
However, decision-makers reveal that two-thirds of enterprise workloads are still located on premises. And according to another key 451 report[iii], the number of enterprises choosing private cloud as their venue of choice for core business functional was expected to grow from 19% to 27% in the next two years. These trends are explained by analyzing practical needs: enterprises continue to choose on-premises deployments due to security, data protection, and compliance issues.
According to the report, 68% of respondents said security was the biggest challenge in using public cloud, while 60% feared data loss. In addition, compliance and data protection concerns were cited as reasons why some workloads could not be placed in the public cloud. Lastly, 23% of respondents are worried about performance and availability.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place: private cloud needs some upgrades
A majority (57%) of enterprises are choosing a hybrid approach[iv] (selecting both public and on-premises deployments) because they see this approach as the best of both worlds. And they are basing their choice of deployment model on requirements of specific workloads.
Unfortunately, the experience of those using the private cloud hasn’t been as positive as many would like. Typically, IT decision-makers face two common challenges:
- Capacity planning
For the most part, enterprise decision-makers are failing in their quest for a balance in capacity planning. Most try to purchase enough capacity to meet service levels during peak performance, while also attempting to not purchase too much. The survey found that most are wasting 40-50% of server capacity, probably leaning more toward buying too much capacity, because 92% acknowledge they must wait 30 days or longer to get new capacity installed.
It’s interesting to note that even those in the public cloud have some capacity planning challenges. Capacity planning was a bigger challenge than expected for 71% of respondents.
- Scalability and agility
The biggest concern for implementing private clouds are scalability and agility, according to respondents. When asked about provisioning times, 80% rated times as poor, and 70% said developers complained of poor agility.
Enterprise decision-makers seem to be stuck in a difficult situation, where neither public cloud nor private cloud fully meets their needs.
Having your cake and eating it too: on-premises, consumption-based infrastructure
Where does all this leave enterprise IT decision-makers? In a perfect world, enterprises should be able to choose the best deployment model for each workload – while still consuming resources in the most effective way possible.
They should also be able to increase or decrease capacity when needed – all while being confident that security, compliance, and performance is ideal. These pay-as-you-go, on-premises private cloud deployments are gaining in popularity because they give enterprises the best of both public cloud and private cloud. Consumption-based options enable scalability and agility through on-demand pricing. They also give enterprises a choice of location and control of the entire computing stack. Combined with the public cloud, enterprises can choose the right deployment for each workload and the ability to scale as needed.
The 451 report concludes a hybrid cloud strategy, mixing and matching public and on premises infrastructure, is the best solution to meet the needs of most enterprises. And to ensure on-premises, private clouds provide more flexibility and ease of use at a lower cost, enterprises should seek on-demand, consumption-based models from trusted infrastructure providers.
The best of both worlds: hybrid cloud from HPE and VMware Cloud Foundation
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) provides the best of both worlds with a hybrid cloud solution that combines HPE Synergy (composable infrastructure) and HPE GreenLake (as a service) with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).
VCF’s VMware is an integrated software-defined stack, extending across private and public cloud environments and offering a single user experience for both. All of the self-service capabilities and automated provisioning features typically associated with off-premises infrastructure are available on premises, and you can easily migrate VMs across those environments.
HPE Synergy lets IT teams compose resources in an instant, dynamically configuring them to meet the needs of VCF workloads -- and scale when needed. This capability enables IT and developers to spin up new resources quickly using a simple bit of code – resulting in faster application provisioning. And with HPE GreenLake’s metering and capacity management, the resources required for each workload are ready to deploy in minutes, not months, shortening time to deploy global IT projects by 65%.[v]
The combination of these three solutions (HPE Synergy, HPE GreenLake, and VCF) provides an ideal hybrid cloud that solves the two common IT challenges of capacity planning and scalability/agility.
Thanks to HPE and VCF, it looks like you really can have your cake and eat it too.
To read more about HPE’s composable, hybrid cloud solution read the press release. You can also read the blog, HPE and VMware team up to bring you the full cloud experience in your data center.
[i, ii] 451 Research, Black and White Paper, Having Your Cake and Eating it Too. Bringing the public cloud experience to the on-premises datacenter, © 2019
[iii, iv] 451 Research 2019 Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud, Hosting & Managed Services, Workloads and Key Projects study
[v] Forrester Consulting, The Total Economic ImpactTM of HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity, May 2018
Deepak Belani
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
@HPE_Compute
https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/hpe-servers-and-systems/
DeepakBelani
As the Senior Solutions & Product Marketing Leader for HPE Synergy and BladeSystem, I direct the thought-leadership, enablement, and demand generation of the industry’s first composable infrastructure platform. With over 20 years in the technology industry, I am passionate about customers, building and bringing to market new solution offerings, and collaborating with partners to enhance solution experiences. You can follow me on Twitter @BelaniDeepak
