Hybrid cloud Hybrid clouds

Cloud Growth Milestones

The development of corporate cloud systems is usually divided into three main stages. The first (2008-2013) was associated with the active development of the cloud offer from vendors and at the same time a cool reaction from the corporate sector. Most companies were reluctant then to implement the cloud. They had to solve difficult problems associated with assessing security, a difficult forecast of the necessary computing power to connect, estimating the cost of operating their own and leased IT infrastructure, and many other^[1].

During the second stage (2014-2016), it was often possible to observe signs of "corporate euphoria." Vendors and cloud service providers have continuously promised unlimited flexibility, innovation and cost savings. Untrained market participants could have the feeling that the cloud could automatically generate miracles.

The current third stage (2017 - present) is associated with the beginning of the active transition of companies to using the hybrid cloud model. The reasons for the shift in their interests are the need for companies to connect a heterogeneous set of external and private cloud solutions, related products, tools and technologies in order to update their own IT infrastructure.

The changes were primarily due to the fact that many global cloud solution providers, such as Google or Alibaba, began to actively offer their services to corporate customers in a packed, cloud form. They now hosted them on their own cloud sites, such as Google Cloud or AliCloud. The use of such cloud services forced companies to look for ways to build a new IT infrastructure, led to the construction of hybrid cloud environments.

Hybrid Cloud Architecture

Source: CNews Analytics

The switch to hybrid clouds has removed many of the issues that have been the subject of controversy between fans of public and private clouds. With modern management systems, the new architecture addresses many of the challenges of data security, for example. This not only guarantees their confidentiality, but also provides a compromise solution that meets regulatory requirements for the storage and processing of, for example, personal data^[2]

The hybrid cloud model also provides excellent scalability and efficiency, reducing operational costs. IT services of companies receive at their disposal a full set of tools for launching a private cloud out of the box, supporting mechanisms for containerization and orchestration of workloads, applying various management policies, compatibility with the Internet of Things, tools for analytical assessment of costs in the cloud and their optimization. There is also great flexibility in choosing a deployment model for both in-house and third-party services.

2022

80% of companies choose hybrid format

85% of companies plan to use cloud technology by 2025. VK announced this on June 23, 2022.

The main focus for the development of corporate IT infrastructures is the hybrid cloud. Read more here.

Demand in Russia for hybrid clouds will grow by 30%

On October 26, 2021, Linxdatacenter announced that demand for hybrid clouds will grow by 30% in 2022.

The transition of the business to hybrid IT consumption models, combining local, private and public cloud environments in a single solution, is one of the defining industry trends in 2021. In 2022, the demand for hybrid solutions in the Russian Federation will show an increase of 30%.

According to IDC forecasts, 90% of companies in the world in their IT development in 2022 will rely on a mix of local infrastructure elements, dedicated private clouds and public cloud platforms.

The to data marketing global hybrid cloud market was valued at $52 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $145 billion by 2026, according to Mordor Intelligence research.

Hybrid architectures are becoming the default model of IT infrastructure as businesses and organizations choose solutions that best suit the nature of workloads and development needs.

A study by the IBM Institute for Business Value found that organizations will use at least 10 different cloud platforms and services by 2023, but only 27% of companies have a holistic strategy for managing hybrid clouds. It becomes critical for organizations to develop a holistic cloud strategy and architecture to remain competitive.

Hybrid IT solutions for a specific project are popular in Russia. For example, online retail launches a test promotion with the manufacturer to determine the level of customer interest in the products offered. Since this is an atypical load for them, then all traffic and management tasks are transferred to a dedicated IT environment, optimally - cloud. Clouds allow you to test any projects, including marketing and customer service services, without interfering with the company's main IT systems, "said Roman Shulimov, Sales Director of Linxdatacenter.

Also, test environments for the development of services and products, sandboxes for information security tasks, etc. are often taken outside the perimeter of the main IT system.

Another trend characteristic of Russia is the demand for hybrid cloud connection schemes from the state. In Russia, government agencies are quite developed in terms of the presence on the Web and the possibilities of digital interaction with business and citizens. Accordingly, they are actively exploring the possibilities of cloud solutions.

According to Roman Shulimov, the "hybrid" is becoming the main model of IT infrastructure. In 2022, more attention should be expected to develop strategies to adapt the hybrid cloud. More companies will use the strategic qualities of a hybrid approach that balances costs, performance, security, and IT management requirements.

According to our estimates, the business and the public sector will increase the use of hybrid cloud solutions by 30% in 2022 - this figure is growing as IT departments learn to select the optimal combinations of current workloads and the corresponding environment, - added Roman Shulimov.

2020: Nutanix Report on IT Priorities and Cloud Business Initiatives

The company, a Nutanix specialist cloudy ON in and hyper-converged infrastructure solutions, released the results of the annual Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) study on IT business priorities and cloud initiatives. It first covered ours, and country based on its results, a separate document Russia^[3] was prepared^[4] here.

2018

Flexera Software Data

As the results of a survey by Flexera Software showed, 84% of organizations use both public and private clouds, including from different operators. Companies refuse to depend on a single cloud provider, choosing services based on their best quality, as well as taking into account the compatibility and availability of the service in the conditions of sharing different cloud offers.

By the beginning of 2019, the share of large enterprises that have already switched to hybrid cloud configuration has already grown to 58%; a year earlier, it was 51%. High dynamics are obvious, especially against the background of companies that continue to adhere to the principle of working only with public or private clouds - there is practically no dynamics there.

Growth in the share of the use of various types of clouds in large companies USA

Source: Flexera, 2019

Flexera estimates that the share of American companies using cloud solutions has already reached 94%. Public clouds are present in IT configurations of 91% of companies, private clouds - 72%. At least one public cloud and one private cloud have 69% of companies.

In the market as a whole, there is a certain balance in the popularity of the use of public and private clouds. Priority in the choice of public clouds was given by 31% of the surveyed companies, 28% prefer private cloud, 17% apply both private and public cloud solutions equally.

On average, companies now use 3.4 cloud platforms (public and private) plus 1.5 cloud platforms are in experimental use. It can be assumed that in the near future, on average, companies will use about five cloud platforms.

At the same time, the tendency to use several cloud platforms at once is observed even in those companies that prefer to work only with private or only with public clouds. So, adherents of only public clouds now on average use 2.0 platforms and another 1.8 are under testing. Adherents of private cloud solutions only have the corresponding numbers - 2.7 and 2.0.

The transition to cloud solutions has led to a significant redistribution of companies' IT budgets. According to Flexera, about half of large American enterprises spend more than $1.2 million a year on cloud services, and 13% of large enterprises have annual cloud costs exceeding $12 million. Interestingly, annual spending on public cloud services is growing faster (24%) than on "private" (8%).

In the small and medium-sized business sector, cloud spending is still lower, although even in this segment, 11% of companies have expenses of more than $1.2 million per year.

Cloud readiness in large and medium-sized companies

As Flexera notes, the market continues to develop. Already, 33% of the computing load of large companies falls on the public cloud and 46% on private; in the SMB sector, these indicators are 43% and 35%, respectively.

IDC Data Cloud Management Market Leaders

Market shares and sales volumes of leading vendors ($ million), sales growth for the year

According to IDC, the growth rate of the cloud management market in 2018 was almost twice as much as in 2017 (18%), Cisco Systems bypassed BMC, and Splunk pushed HPE into the "Others" category.

Gartner Data

Gartner views the hybrid cloud management market more narrowly, but more specifically. According to its analysts, this market segment includes software platforms that give companies the opportunity to manage their cloud presence, monitor the operation of launched cloud applications, and orchestrate resources located both within their own data center and in public and private cloud environments. According to Gartner estimates, Flexera, Scalr, Embotics, Morpheus Data are named market leaders in hybrid cloud management systems.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Hybrid Cloud Management Systems Market

Forrester analysts generally adhere to the same criteria in their assessment of the hybrid cloud management systems market as Gartner. However, in terms of assessing market leadership, Forrester experts have their own opinions. Like Gartner, Forrester noted Flexera as the undisputed market leader. But next to him they also located Scalr (despite the fact that so far the market share is very small), VMware (noting its significant market positions) and Embotics (rewarding for its extensive experience and a full set of tools provided).

Hybrid Cloud Management (HCM)

A typical hybrid cloud model is the deployment of the iPaaS integration platform. Source: Hybrid Cloud Data Management For Dummies, Wiley

At first, the most popular, according to Forrester, were the following HCM systems, which are often classified as the first generation (Generation 1) of products of this type: BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management, IBM Cloud Orchestrator and Micro Focus Cloud System Automation (CSA). Their main distinguishing feature was versatility. Hybrid cloud was considered for them as one of the possible applications. Users were provided with a very wide range of various tools that allowed fine-tuning in any configuration.

Versatility is good in itself, but it takes a long time to learn, and strong knowledge and experience are needed for effective application. Therefore, the concept of universality was quickly overgrown with various deviations. The new HCM products were primarily focused on the needs of customers who have already developed an understanding of the working conditions and their own needs for the formation of a hybrid environment.

The choice of an HCM product today resembles a quick search for a suitable option, taking into account the consideration of its position on three different "scales." The first "scale" is the search for a product where a wide range of functions for working with complex cloud configurations is offered on one edge, on the other there are the simplest products in terms of functional content, the main value of which is ease of use. The second "scale" is a search between "sophisticated" systems with a full set of functions and aggregators that allow you to connect external, "best-in-class" tools. The third "scale" is the choice taking into account the provided mechanism for connecting external modules - from API to modular embedding.

Generation Gen1 HCM products are in demand today only among large companies and service providers who need to work with complex or diverse cloud configurations. They appreciate the ability to granulate control by selected parameters and the depth of integration with their own platforms. The rest of the customers are more attracted by the convenient interface and the speed of implementation, including taking into account the necessary configuration.

Forrester Wave: HCM Market Leaders (Q2 2018). Source: Forrester

HCM Product Layout

The interest of customers to have at hand all the necessary control tools at once pushes developers to create all-inclusive products. They are easier to integrate in an enterprise environment, can be used to solve various application problems. But this choice gives rise to a dependence on a certain vendor and his chosen approach. As a result, the tools of other vendors often become difficult to use, even when the use of an alternative product is more preferable.

Customers also try to avoid dependence on a specific vendor, preferring to choose an HCM product built according to a modular scheme. This retains multifunctionality, but ensures independence in choosing the right solution. The main thing that customers pay for in this case is support for standardization and the possibility of replacing part of the functional solutions with others.

The modular approach found understanding among developers as well. If their product does not yet have support for a certain part of the functions, then they easily allow its combination with other third-party tools without engaging in the "invention of the bicycle."

The "user's choice" option is often also used. It allows you to turn off the built-in tool and use the alternative one. As a result, it has already become customary for current HCM products to use third-party products to perform certain application tasks, for example, to manage configurations or applications, automate the deployment of containerized applications, and analyze machine-generated logs. Ansible, Chef, Helm, Kubernetes, Puppet, Splunk and Terraform products are often used for these purposes.

Expansion of functional filling

Solutions are also popular among developers to add new tools to the original set when they are found to be missing. They can be added to the base package in two ways: on demand and as needed. Technically, the product has a mechanism for automatically embedding a new function.

Thanks to this mechanism, it is also possible to increase by adding new functions on demand. If the finished module is not yet available, then the developer can connect to its development. If there is already a tool created by a third-party developer or partner, then the connection is performed as an external module (plugin).

With the cloud services market continuing to expand rapidly, developers of most HCM systems also provide a complete internal API for their products. With this information at their disposal, corporate developers and system administrators can add their own tools themselves, forming an individual functional package.

Creating tools on your own, of course, requires serious efforts from customers, especially in the absence of technical support from the vendor, but the necessary functionality can be obtained faster without waiting for the release of updates.

Management Options in Hybrid Cloud Environments

The practical application of HCM systems is carried out according to two main scenarios.

The first is about creating an environment that is transparent to other software resources, in which all the features of the cloud configuration used are hidden. This scenario was called "invisible clouds."

The second scenario involves creating an environment where only operations performed on cloud resources remain transparent to users. Such a scenario was called "invisible management."

Developers of some HCM systems limit customers only to the first use case. They position their platform as a single entry point for controlling changes in the cloud configuration, positioning it equally for both users and developers. Due to the inevitable unification in this case, the entire arsenal of management functions associated with supporting cloud configuration commands is carried out beyond the perimeter available to application tasks. As a result, it becomes possible to apply a single set of commands and form a single set of rules for working with any cloud platforms.

However, such unification is inconvenient for customers who also want to conduct research with cloud resources. When unifying, the developer "imposes" his own approach to management on them, while the customer may need his own set of tools and rules in his work. Therefore, it is also important for them to be able to obtain another option for configuring the management system - "invisible management" of the cloud. In this case, you can experiment to achieve the necessary configuration or optimization.

Applying the invisible cloud script in practice involves creating an abstract layer represented by a set of available APIs. You will also need to create an additional interface layer (API) that will translate data received from various sources through its own APIs and in its own formats.

In some HCM products, the same interface layer is also used to translate requests to individual APIs. As a result, the so-called Shim layer appears - an intermediate proxy layer that allows you to solve any problems that arise with ensuring compatibility. Inconsistencies can arise due to specific rules and requirements imposed by specific cloud providers.

Standardized resources

Despite the recent active use of the proxy layer, all resources used must be standardized under the cloud platform API. Although when connecting an HCM system, it only requires setting up policies at the proxy level, it is still necessary to also perform a template transformation of the resources involved to ensure their performance under the action of commands received from the HCM product.

It turns out that it is quite easy to build transparent cloud management today, but it turns out to be much more difficult to achieve full access to resources from another cloud platform. In such a situation, many customers prefer to have control panels of two types - operational and experimental. Using the experimental panel, they first work out the new configuration, and only then let it into the "circulation" using the operational panel.

There are several ways to connect new resources. You can 1) export existing templates to new platforms; 2) redo the template proposed by the platform developer to the desired form; 3) start using the provided template, making the necessary changes as the facts of violation of policies are revealed. The latter option is the most gentle, but it is also the least attractive for users: for some time inconsistencies will occur in their work, and corrections will have to be made manually.

2017

NetApp survey of 750 European CIOs shows dominance of hybrid cloud model

NetApp released in March the results of its first industry survey on the transition to cloud technologies in Europe. An analysis of the responses of seven hundred and fifty respondents from among Chief information officers and managers in France, Germany and the UK showed that hybrid cloud is the most popular in the transition of companies to cloud technologies - more than half of all survey participants in each country noted that they opted for a combination of private and public cloud (69% in Germany; 61% in France; 58% in the UK). In addition, more than half of respondents identified security as the main reason for the transition to the cloud, which indicates that confidence in such service providers continues to strengthen. The main areas of cloud use in all countries included in the study were storage and backup.

Respondents in all three countries prefer hybrid cloud. At the same time, they turn to the services of partners of different profiles: preference is given primarily to local providers - they were chosen by a total of 26% of respondents in Germany, France and the UK. Hyperscalers (18%) and large cloud service providers or global system integrators (17%) are less popular. Only 3% of respondents said that they do not use cloud services at all or only plan to switch to them. Cloud skeptics have no characteristic unifying features - by business size, industry vertical, or, for example, cloud strategy.

Security and cloud complement each other well. More than half of respondents - 56% - said security was a key motive in the move to the cloud. In Germany, France and the UK, respondents from the three proposed options chose safety. This indicates that data transfer to cloud service providers is not perceived as an element of risk, indicating good prospects for the further transition of companies to cloud technologies. In all three countries, survey participants also highlighted motivations such as flexibility (55%) and cost reduction (54%). Ease of use is the most important motivator for French (61%) and British (50%) respondents. In Germany, this aspect was sidelined (46%) by data protection considerations (53%).

Data storage and backup are the main uses of the cloud. But the matter is not limited to them. In the UK, 56% called the main storage of files, 51% - databases, and analytics, disaster recovery and SaaS received about 40% of the vote. In Germany, file storage took third place (60%), the fourth went to databases (57%), followed by disaster recovery (50%) and SaaS (45%). In France, databases (56%) and file storage (53%) ranked third and fourth. Other options such as remote work, collaboration tool, analytics, SaaS and disaster recovery were cited by 40% or fewer of French respondents. In all countries, document management was in last place .

2016

Data from Sandler Research

• According to Sandler Research, the average annual growth rate of this market in 2014-2019. will be 29%.
• The main requirement for operators of such services will be seamless data integration in private and public clouds.
• In an effort to reduce infrastructure costs and increase flexibility, customers will gradually abandon their own data centers in favor of purchasing cloud application delivery services.
• The ability to switch from one cloud service provider to another in seconds without migrating data, compromising their security, will be a key provider requirement  in 2016.
• Hybrid clouds allow you to transparently manage the cost of consumed IT services, save on operating costs, and get guaranteed SLAs.

EMC Data

EMC Research:

• The digital transformation enabled by the hybrid cloud helps organizations increase IT agility and makes the transition to digital business a faster, easier , and more accessible process.
• Moreover, the results showed that by reducing IT costs, hybrid clouds themselves are an investment in digital transformation, and the most aggressive adherents of hybrid clouds are also the most active in the field of digital transformation.
• Of the organizations surveyed with a significant number of workloads working in the hybrid cloud, they are three times more likely to solve the problems of building a digital business and infrastructure readiness than those who do not use these technologies.

Gartner Data

See also

• Cloud computing, IaaS, SaaS, Paas
• Private cloud

Notes