A decade ago, bug-eyed tech visionaries, hearts beating wildly in their chests, gushed like excitable schoolchildren about the cloud. Executive ears pricked up at the mention of a wonder technology that would allow them to shift to a third party the worry and a considerable part of the expense of maintaining and protecting their critical data. Suddenly, resource-conscious execs everywhere thought it just might be possible to have one’s cake and eat it too.
Apps-first mentality
Months gave way to years, and company after company took the plunge, deploying and migrating their apps to the cloud. Most of them found that the success of their migration depended on their taking an app-centric approach. Companies that take such an approach can have control of their apps, and can have the same excellent performance, security, and availability across their entire hybrid (cloud and on-premise) environment. For many, the greatest value of taking this approach appears to be in the visibility it brings.
It is all well and good to stress the importance of an agile, scalable, and flexible technology environment, but the entire proposition rests on how clear a view you have of your system. Companies that have a bird’s eye view of their environment can access intelligence in the form of data, and can quickly and accurately pinpoint anomalies.
Decision-makers no longer consider the cloud to be some wild, wondrous animal to be tamed. They know there is no magic. In the information age, the cloud has been brought down to earth. It is now accessible, tangible, and easily leveraged. Companies are cashing in on the once-fantastical promises of the cloud, and now enjoy all the benefits of the cloud as if they were always a given in their business.
Fears remain
Even among the cloud-converted, however, there remains a lingering fear that for all the benefits of migrating some or all of a data system to the cloud, they may be surrendering a measure of control over their apps and, thus, their company. Such fears, be they founded or not, seem to shrink beside the overwhelming and undeniable reality that the cloud will not be stopped.
Gartner Inc. indicates that three-quarters of all businesses will be digital by 2020. The cloud is here to stay. If the question is no longer “Will we move to the cloud?” but “How will we move to the cloud?”, perhaps the answer for many organizations comes in the form of a hybrid strategy and implementation.
Webinar second in series
On Tuesday, June 6, at 2 pm EST, CompuCom and Cisco will be hosting the second webinar in the Hybrid Cloud Exploration webinar series, “Hybrid Cloud Strategy: Why an Application-Centric Approach is Critical.” Join Frost & Sullivan Analyst Lynda Stadtmueller, CompuCom’s VP of Products & Solutions, CompuCom Cloud Technology Services, Chad Atchley, and Dan Lefebvre, Consulting Systems Engineer, Cisco, as they explore hybrid cloud infrastructures and identify the key elements that go into successful hybrid implementations.
In this webinar, you will learn how to:
- Control and secure apps across multiple clouds without “vendor lock-in”
- Maintain enterprise-class governance of clouds, users, and apps
- Protect applications from security breaches in a multi-tenancy cloud environment
- Manage regulatory compliance in a multi-cloud world
In addition to presentations, this webinar will provide participants with the opportunity to ask questions. Following the webinar, participants will be given a download link for a very informative paper by Frost & Sullivan.
You can find out more about CompuCom’s Hybrid Cloud Exploration webinar series by clicking here.
To register for “Hybrid Cloud Strategy: Why an Application-Centric Approach is Critical,” click here.
