Hybrid Cloud White Paper
Cloud computing is evolving to give enterprise IT the freedom to run each of its business applications in the infrastructure best suited for it in terms of cost, performance, security, and other factors. As a result, IT teams are challenged to assign each workload to its optimum compute environment, whether that’s a private or public cloud or even a traditional data center.
The hybrid cloud model, which combines private and public clouds (see box), is quickly gaining momentum as the IT infrastructure model of choice. It will ultimately enable IT to move workloads back and forth dynamically, as price, performance, and other variables change. This promise of intercloud agility is one of the factors accelerating hybrid deployments: IDC expects the hybrid cloud market to expand at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20% through 2021, which is 15 percentage points higher than the worldwide software market.
This whitepaper explores the benefits and challenges of hybrid cloud computing and discusses some best practices for building a “cloud-right”—not necessarily a “cloud-first”—IT strategy that accounts for today’s capabilities as well as current limitations.