5. Hybrid clouds (2013-2015)    

With the increasing pressure to both expand data centers and run them more efficiently, many people are singing the praises of the hybrid cloud. By 2014, Paquet estimates that 80 percent of enterprise cloud initiatives will be for private and hybrid clouds. For many companies, the appeal of the hybrid cloud is that the application is run internally as much as possible. Only during peak hours does the application scale out to a public cloud. In theory, that sounds ideal. But the problem with this arrangement, according to Paquet, is that most applications today aren’t built to scale out to this degree. Unless companies deploy software that takes advantage of cloud architecture, they won’t get the full benefits of this approach. Unfortunately, most companies aren’t doing so. Over the next two years, says Paquet, more than 60 percent of cloud adoptions in the enterprise will be to redeploy current applications unchanged.

With the right software, hybrid clouds do offer enterprises an opportunity to shrink their data centers, cutting costs and reducing energy consumption. Still, companies should think carefully about the risks associated with a public cloud environment. What happens when there is a service interruption? How will this affect the application and users? Is there an agreed-upon response time in place?

Read about fabric data centers on the next page

Write a comment

cforms contact form by delicious:days