Why and how should organisations adopt a hybrid IT strategy?
13 September 2022
Hybrid IT solutions are becoming a widely accepted essential for an organisation’s digital transformation. Despite its necessity, many organisations lack confidence in implementing a hybrid IT infrastructure successfully across on-premise, cloud, edge and software as a service (SaaS) settings.
Here, Martin Thunman, Co-Founder and CEO of Crosser, explores why and how organisations should implement a hybrid IT strategy.
Digital transformation is no longer just a desire, but an absolute for organisations in all industries looking to improve their operational efficiency. A greater business need for data control, the cost effectiveness of cloud-based services, and a desire for greater flexibility have driven many organisations towards a hybrid IT infrastructure. But what does this involve?
Defining hybrid
A hybrid IT infrastructure consists of a combination of cloud, edge and on-premise applications and data centres. A business’s enterprise systems and applications are deployed across any of these layers of infrastructure depending on which environment would yield the greatest performance and efficiency.
Hybrid IT has emerged as a result of multifaceted technological development. According to Gartner, by 2025, over half of IT spending on application software, infrastructure software, business process services and system infrastructure will shift to cloud-based technologies.
An ever-growing range of cloud-based applications means that even the smallest of organisations is likely to use some form of SaaS – be it for anything from sales to asset management or quality control.
It’s important to not confuse hybrid IT with hybrid cloud, which exclusively blends private and public cloud services, but doesn’t include other elements like data centres or on-premise infrastructure.
Hybrid IT doesn’t just relate to the infrastructure itself, it’s an entire strategy that encapsulates hybrid collaboration, user experience, device compatibility and data formatting.
The best of all worlds
Adopting a hybrid IT infrastructure can bring a variety of benefits compared to an entirely cloud or entirely on-premise infrastructure. The key benefits of hybrid centre around the elevated integration and interoperability of the system. According to Mulesoft’s 2022 Connectivity Benchmark Report, some 88 percent of organisations said integration challenges continue to slow digital transformation initiatives, virtually unchanged from the 2021 report’s figure of 87 percent. So, while the situation hasn’t worsened, it certainly hasn’t improved.
By adopting a hybrid IT strategy, it’s possible for organisations to avoid the complex task of migrating legacy systems and applications to their new cloud-based counterpart. It also creates a stable IT environment where cloud, edge, on-premise and data centre environments can be used in harmony, each for the use cases they’re optimal for.
With remote working now taking a permanent seat at the table, it’s also worth considering if a company wants to adopt a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy, and if so, how to make certain applications available on external devices. In each of these scenarios, a hybrid IT system is the enabler of successful deployment.
Going hybrid-first
It’s possible to elevate hybrid IT infrastructure even further to unlock a more seamless digital transformation by adopting not just a hybrid, but a hybrid-first IT strategy. A comprehensive hybrid IT strategy doesn’t just facilitate interoperability and integration of different systems, but actually optimises the entire system by taking the benefits of each environment to maximise system efficiency and functionality.
In contrast to just hybrid, a hybrid-first IT infrastructure doesn’t just involve piecing together different IT environments and hoping for the best, it’s about designing a comprehensive system specifically for hybrid use.
To support organisations looking to implement a hybrid-first strategy, Crosser offers a hybrid integration solution that gives organisations the full flexibility to deploy data processing nodes on-premise, at the edge, in the cloud and at a data centre simultaneously – all within the same universal platform.
Once deployed, the Crosser platform acts as a centralised location for all an organisation’s data processing and analysis needs.
By implementing a hybrid-first IT strategy, organisations can create a bespoke blend of IT infrastructure to suit their own priorities – be it efficiency, automation, cost savings, simplicity or overall user experience. By taking the benefits of each environment, businesses can create a system designed specifically for hybrid integration, unlocking the benefits of all IT options.
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