InterXion : Propel business performance with hybrid cloud

Advances in technology mean that businesses need to stay one step ahead if they want a leg up on their competition. One way to do this is through the adoption of hybrid cloud; another is the use of a colocation data centre.

The hybrid cloud model provides the best of both worlds. It combines the security and control of a dedicated on-premises infrastructure or private cloud with the flexibility and scalability of the public cloud. Data centre colocation can help businesses realise the many benefits of hybrid cloud, as it provides the best environment to ensure high-quality connectivity between on-premises infrastructure and private and public clouds.

A primary driver of hybrid cloud adoption is the flexibility it offers companies looking to activate their digital transformation. By fostering growth and cost savings, enabling innovation, improving user experience and ensuring security and compliance, cloud environments enable businesses to go digital and achieve competitive advantages that could not be attained before.

New revenue streams and innovation

Delivering good digital business experiences to employees and customers requires enterprises to be able to provide custom applications at the speed of innovation. To do this, applications need to be able to take advantage of the cloud while also seamlessly integrating with existing on-premises IT assets.

Hybrid cloud environments enable applications to connect with the native capabilities whatever they are run in. Applications in the cloud can take advantage of on-premises capabilities, and applications on-premises can take advantage of new cloud capabilities.

By linking cloud-based systems and server colocation with their trusted legacy systems, businesses can innovate, develop and deploy new applications in real time, allowing them to easily expand into new industries, create new revenue streams and invent new business models that all ultimately add to the bottom line.

Fostering growth and cost savings

As businesses are able to spend more time innovating, whether it be a new product or internal business process, they will need to scale, and quickly. But for these growing companies, scaling on-premises infrastructure is expensive and time-consuming - and to make it cost-effective, businesses would have to have accurate growth predictions, which is a big challenge.

The flexibility of a hybrid approach opens the door to a wealth of business advantages, from driving innovation and new revenue streams to enabling growth and cost efficiencies. For example, an online retail business sees more traffic during public holidays. Building capacity for this peak load is important to ensure the retailer can meet the demand. But during the doldrums of the summer months, the added capacity goes to waste, which can add to costs quite quickly.

Organisations need the ability to easily scale up for demand and scale back when the peak is finished, but it is difficult to predict exactly what that looks like. And this capability is hard to achieve with traditional legacy systems.

Hybrid cloud environments give organisations unlimited resources on demand, enabling them to scale up and down as necessary, and allowing them to grow and change at the speed of demand while still remaining in control of their on-premises infrastructure.

Improving user experience

The cost of a bad user experience can make or break a company's digital success, as it impacts both internal and external users. A company's internal workforce is increasingly dependent on software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud services, so sub-par performance affects their ability to work productively, while external customers depend on the online services that businesses offer, which can constitute the bulk of revenue and brand value.

Many enterprises are continuously building up their control and expertise to deliver better user experiences. As part of that, leveraging a hybrid cloud environment allows select workloads to take advantage of new technologies faster without impacting traditional systems; and businesses can better deliver a quality digital experience that keeps internal productivity going while ensuring a reliable user experience that will keep customers coming back to spend money.

Prioritising security

These days, a top concern for businesses is security and data protection. And as the number of data breaches continues to rise, and as business demands shift from local to global, businesses must prioritise protecting their customers' data as well as their own, while also meeting various legislation, such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

Because hybrid cloud environments allow businesses to keep their data local while using a cloud for global expansion, they can determine the best security mix for their data.

Getting ahead

Hybrid cloud is more than just technology - it is about positioning your business to be as competitive as possible. The flexibility of a hybrid approach opens the door to a wealth of business advantages, from driving innovation and new revenue streams to enabling growth and cost efficiencies, delivering better experiences and improved security.

Now is the time for enterprises to capitalise on these business advantages that will keep them ahead of the competition.

To learn more about how colocated hybrid cloud can help your business stay ahead of the game, download our factsheet.

This article was originally produced and published by Business Reporter. View the original article at business-reporter.co.uk