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Hybrid Cloud- Importance and security

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Sumed Marwaha leads the India delivery center providing services and technology solutions to Unisys and its customers worldwide. He also serves as the Managing Director on the India board.
Sumed held senior leadership positions with NTT Data and Dell Services. Sumed also served as the Country Head for Infrastructure Operations at Perot Systems and as account manager with EDS


The phrase "Digital first" is catching on and Indian firms are not too far behind. Moving from traditional on-prem infrastructures to cloud environments, nearly 63% of Indian enterprises have boosted hybrid cloud spending when compared to the world average of 46%, according to a Mckinsey report. The pandemic has reinforced the need for cloud infrastructure in this hybrid work culture.
Companies have chosen to adopt a variety of cloud infrastructures including public, private and hybrid models to suit their needs. However, hybrid seems to be gaining much popularity in recent times. Hybrid cloud is a mix of computing/services or storage in a combination of on-premises, public cloud services like AWS or Azure and private cloud infrastructures.

What makes hybrid cloud popular?
There are several use-cases making hybrid cloud a popular option. These include providing flexibility to the organization to make their environment more scalable, providing better data security by keeping more sensitive data on-prem or in a private cloud environment, providing a cheaper option to manage through high demand periods, making applications more agile thus driving innovation in the organization while keeping the typical cloud benefits at play like converting CAPEX into OPEX, etc.,

What does all this mean for India?
In the developed markets, hybrid cloud can drive cost savings allowing enterprises to have better control on aspects like security, scalability and speed. However, when we look at markets like India, it comes with its own challenges.
Firstly, hybrid clouds are more expensive to implement compared to public clouds. This also means that organizations need better cloud and application architecture skills within their organizations or need to partner with the right organization to be able to achieve the same. India, being a price-sensitive market, also need to ensure the return on investment justifies the move. In many cases, the already available technologies may be over-engineered for the requirements of many organizations in India.

Additionally, implementing a hybrid cloud is a complex and time-consuming process. A significant portion of data is on-premises and maintaining this infrastructure impacts the costs until they fully migrate it to the cloud. While the hybrid cloud is meant to help enterprises balance their cost and security- they must assess if they really need it. Those companies that do plan on adapting to the hybrid cloud must look at their cloud migration journey more critically; weigh both the benefits and challenges it would bring along against their priorities and overall company goals.

Organizations also need to be aware of the complexity of managing hybrid cloud environments and ensuring they optimally utilize all the resources that are deployed. This does not mean that a hybrid cloud strategy will not work for India. It just means that companies will have to assess their cloud needs before they can implement it. Both government and private sectors are working towards building robust infrastructure to enable highspeed connectivity and bringing Indian businesses online. While this effort is on, companies are looking to take their on-premise infrastructure on to the cloud.

Final Thoughts
From a business standpoint, in the era of unparalleled business transformation, cloud offers various advantages. A hybrid cloud platform takes that a step further, operating across two or more cloud environments.

Businesses have realized that hybrid cloud delivers a dependable and efficient remote working environment, making it even more difficult to dismiss hybrid cloud as a viable option for today’s working style. Due to this transition in the conventional work environment, we can expect businesses to get more efficient at deployment and management of flexible and customized cloud solutions, for long-term growth and continuous innovation.

The work culture is changing and the online working environment has taken over the traditional ways of working. To make remote working a seamless experience, business leaders and enterprises have been acknowledging the significance of hybrid cloud and realizing that the gains from hybrid cloud seems too big to be ignored.