Cloud and On-Premises: The Best of Two Worlds

Let’s be honest, when most IT people are questioned about cloud, immediately they would mention either Amazon (AWS) or Microsoft Azure; some may also mention Google Cloud Platform, IBM SoftLayer or even Rackspace. All of them are Public Cloud providers with their own expertise and offering as well as market share. According to a Forbes recent article, the more AWS and Azure compete to win customers, the greater the innovation and growth in Public Cloud adoption. The article has some interesting data points but, for the purpose of this blog, I’ll mention the following three:

• Existing Public Cloud customers predict spending will grow 16% year over year in 2017
• AWS dominates awareness levels with SMB’s who have existing Public Cloud deployments, with Microsoft Azure the most known and considered in enterprises
• Microsoft Azure is the most-used public cloud and the most likely to be purchased or renewed

However, what’s in it for you as an IT on premise hero? I am sure that at least one of the following situations will resonate with you especially if you work in a mid-size organization either private or public:

• Compliance and regulations from the government. If you are in a healthcare industry or, let’s say, retail; you don’t want to lose your customer’s data or, you may have some country issues with regards to data sovereignty.
• Moving applications to private/public clouds and making sure that the user end-to-end experience remains great. From the user through the network and to the cloud

These two are situations where Hybrid IT takes place and your on premise world mixes with the Public Cloud.

Overall, 38% of all workloads are supported with on-premise infrastructure and platforms, increasing to 43% for enterprises.

This is an interesting statement especially when many people think about cloud, but mostly from the Public Cloud offering standpoint. Some people even believe that Public Cloud is all they need and that the infrastructure and network matter significantly less or perhaps not at all. This is not completely accurate, as you can see from the above graph. We are living in a Hybrid IT world.

According to an IDC report, Cloud adoption is growing, but relatively few organizations (only 3%) have advanced cloud strategies and it’s what we call the Cloud Gap. So, what’s causing this Cloud Gap? Growing complexity. That’s why It’s time to elevate the expectations of your cloud for a hybrid IT world. Where cloud helps you achieve your business objectives (with respect to agility, performance, risk, and cost) by meeting the new requirements hybrid IT operations, risk management, visibility and insights, and secure connectivity.

To help you close the Cloud gap and enjoy the benefits from both worlds; on premise and Public Cloud, Cisco and Microsoft has partner together to provide an integrated system for Microsoft Azure stack running in UCS servers providing you the following benefits:

• The solution is specifically designed for rapid scalability and hybrid cloud workloads, with policy-based management, API-enabled automation, and hardware abstraction.
• Hybrid clouds operate by moving virtual machines between private and public clouds. Cisco UCS was designed from the foundation to optimize the performance of virtualized workloads.
• You gain hybrid cloud agility for Microsoft Azure services, with choices to manage on-premises governance, security, and performance in accordance with your organizational policies.

These are just a few benefits that address the above-mentioned situations of your day-to-day work. If you want to learn more about Cisco and Microsoft Azure stack, please go here. Remember, cloud is not a product but a consumption model. It’s not only Public Cloud either nor servers nor networking gear. It’s a holistic strategy that addresses the complexity of the new Hybrid IT world. Where you are on your cloud maturity level can be easily addressed by assessing your company under IDC best practices here.

If you want to learn more how Cisco can help you close the Cloud gap, go here.