Let’s be honest - if you’ve clicked on this article, you’re still not entirely convinced about adopting a hybrid cloud approach in your organization. The benefits intrigue you: the agility, flexibility, and cost efficiency that come with a hybrid cloud environment sound very attractive. Here are some of my favourite facts and stats:

• 83% of decision-makers said that the ideal architecture is the hybrid cloud (Enterprise Cloud Index)
• Hybrid cloud allows developers to place workloads where they perform the best, ultimately resulting in higher speed of development, flexibility, cost efficiency, developer satisfaction, and manageability. (Forrester)
• Hybrid cloud offers developers the best range of tools - innovating with the power of the cloud while owning the most important parts of your infra. (Forrester)

But is hybrid cloud the right choice for your organization?

Here at Cycloid, we say yes...

I strongly believe that hybrid cloud is a durable strategy that will prepare your business to weather any challenge. Over the last 2 years, the need for versatile business solutions has become clear, and going hybrid will be a crucial step in your digital transformation journey.  Whether or not you think this is for you now is irrelevant - hybrid cloud will be a decision you’ll have to make sooner or later.

So why not future-proof your technology now? Let’s look at some examples:

You’re a cloud-native startup that doesn’t see the need for an on-premise solution.

You’re in a better position than most - as a modern company, all of your operations are already in the cloud (or multiple clouds) which fits your current needs. Your developers have the flexibility to innovate while the cloud provides much-needed agility for the startup environment. But do you truly own your tech?

Solely public cloud infrastructure is not always practical, because developers need to continually use in-house tools and data. The more of your own infrastructure you own, the easier it becomes to manage and govern in-house solutions and maintain data security.

Additionally, as your startup scales up, there will be a need to meet enterprise requirements around supporting legacy systems and controls. Future acquisitions of companies with other hosting providers or important customers that will require a dedicated on-premise infrastructure - all of these will need a sophisticated hybrid cloud solution. So, instead of scrambling to meet these requirements, why not be ready for any situation now?

You're a large company looking to migrate from on-premise to cloud, but the move may take months or even years.

You’re on the polar opposite side to a startup - your exec team has finally made the decision to move your infra to the cloud, which means there is going to be a phase where you will have to handle both environments. Depending on where you are in your cloud journey and your dev workload, it could be a couple of months, a year, a couple of years, or even more. If you are a massive enterprise with basements full of server rooms, you might not even have the time to migrate everything before another strategic decision is taken. Future acquisitions will have to be taken into account, where you might find yourself in a situation where you will have another complete infrastructure to handle.

A hybrid cloud approach may be the perfect solution - not just for the time being, but also in the long term. It’s a lot more manageable and sophisticated than a one-cloud, one-approach attitude, and instead takes the best of both worlds and prepares you for anything the future might throw at you.

You see the benefit of hybrid cloud but have concerns about the level of maturity of your applications and governance of your tools, processes, and people.

And it’s a completely valid concern! Hybrid cloud rollout is not a process to take lightly - especially when you have to think about the success of your business and the happiness of your developers. Adopting a fresh new strategy will require untangling the web of complex tooling solutions in the fast-moving tech environment and a lot of trial and error.

But even more important than the necessary tech will be the cultural and organizational change you will have to make at your company. Hybrid cloud changes the way your devs will interact with your infrastructure, and how they approach your product roadmap. Hybrid cloud is about agility, trust, and autonomy.

But these things don't come from a tool and it’s something that enterprises find remarkably difficult to achieve. So can you overcome the challenges of hybrid cloud? Incidentally, we actually wrote an ebook about that! In Life in the Fast Lane: The dual journey to DevOps and hybrid cloud mastery, we discuss the pitfalls of hybrid cloud adoption and show you ways of how DevOps (and Cycloid) can help you avoid them.

Conclusion

It’s true - the move to hybrid cloud will be a different journey for cloud-enabled organizations than for cloud-native ones. But to neglect the benefits of hybrid cloud now will mean setting a trap for your future self. 

According to a study by Vanson Bourne, 92% of respondents who currently run on-premises infrastructure have deployed or plan to deploy a hybrid infrastructure. You could wait another year, or five, but the transformation of technology and business will happen with or without you. Secure your organization and future-proof your tech today, so you won’t have to worry about tomorrow.

Most importantly, don’t end upon’t falling into a pit that you didn’t even know about!