A new study from Accenture shows that the majority of companies have pivoted to a hybrid approach (78%) in response to the need for a more balanced approach. Additionally, it is expected that more than 90% of organizations will opt for multicloud architectures to avoid excessive reliance on a single public cloud provider.
Matías Arturo, CEO of Accenture, explained that “it is becoming increasingly clear that the public cloud is not suitable for all workloads, as it is limited by business challenges (for example, licensing models that make it unprofitable completely migrate to a hyperscaler); technical challenges, such as latency and throughput for very specific workloads; data severity/speed; sovereignty restrictions/; edge deployment scenarios that require decentralized infrastructure; and, in some cases, business continuity requirements.”
The Accenture executive added that “in this context, hybrid cloud models are often the best option to respond to all business requirements. For example, organizations can turn to the private cloud or even an on-premises data center to meet regulatory and compliance requirements.”
The Accenture study identifies five key steps for companies to drive a successful hybrid cloud strategy.
The first is to define the correct target environments and select the right target for each of your applications called landing zones. What does this mean in practice? A company’s three-year architecture may be different when looking at six years. For example, organizations with large legacy ERP environments that need to be replaced know that this will take time. Therefore, applications may be in the three-year target architecture, but not in the six-year target architecture.
The second key step is to forge a hybrid architecture. Matías Arturo explained that “for this, integration must be promoted on three levels. First, the technology. This means developing an integration layer in all landing zones. Second, the processes. Align and integrate processes, for example, harmonization of procurement and supervision. Third, the people. The knowledge necessary to design, operate and optimize must be available – developed or acquired – and gathered throughout the company. The integration of these three areas enables organizations to dynamically optimize price, performance, and requirements for strategic business goals.”
Once companies have identified the appropriate landing zones and planned the integrated architecture to meet those requirements, they must create a control plane to manage the hybrid multi-cloud architecture. This requires a holistic approach—that is, a stack of tools and processes—to manage the cloud continuum, orchestrate change, and drive innovation. That way, developers and operators can automate tasks and workflows at scale, regardless of location, by bringing together new processes and a better integrated set of tools, enabled through new platforms and automation.
Matías Arturo explained that “a continuous control plane helps organizations adopt new practices and operating models, giving them the means and discipline to innovate rapidly and support a culture of continuous reinvention. It enables companies to balance their need for operational and financial stability with their need for rapid innovation and agility.”
The fourth key step is to define a roadmap. Companies must decide how to organize the migration to optimized landing zones. Sinagra highlighted that “in some cases, it makes sense to consider families of applications together, for example, if a business process encompasses three applications. Sometimes a new software-as-a-service offering can replace several smaller applications. In others, it may be more profitable to rethink a business process rather than customize a solution to fit an existing process. It is also important to consider the operating model.”
The fifth step is to move towards the Cloud Continuum. Once companies have reached their target state, they can continually take advantage of new innovations from multiple private and public cloud providers. This means constantly redesigning the infrastructure to stay aligned with the business, as strategic goals evolve and new technologies are introduced.
Matías Arturo concluded that “more and more organizations are recognizing that hybrid architectures are the right option for their various business needs of today and tomorrow. With the right strategy, companies will stay secure and agile.”
The full report (24-page PDF document in English) is available at this link. No registration required.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.