Cloud

Take These 3 Steps to Maximize the Value of Your Hybrid Cloud Environment

IT leaders must plan better to gain the most from their investments.

Neil Graver is an executive technology strategist for CDW and a technology leader with more than 20 years of experience.

Some organizations don’t maximize their hybrid cloud architecture because they’re operating two separate environments instead of leveraging the power of a unified strategy.

A hybrid cloud is a mixed computing environment that combines private data center infrastructure with public cloud services, allowing data and applications to be shared between them. It offers extreme flexibility by enabling seamless operation in a location that best aligns with business objectives. A consumption-based cost model can more tightly align IT expenditures to business transaction volumes and provide increased flexibility between capital and operational budgets.

Here are three strategies to ensure businesses can maximize their investments and reap the full benefits of hybrid cloud.

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1. Consider Business Requirements to Better Implement Hybrid Cloud

If your business seeks to maximize the benefits of a true hybrid cloud infrastructure, it must first consider its business and financial requirements. To have a hybrid cloud strategy that is financially optimized and operationally effective, business leaders must define their desired goals up front. A strategy that isn’t based on business outcomes will most likely waste the organization’s cloud budget. But a solid hybrid cloud foundation may achieve instant scalability and financial alignment.

FIND OUT: Why automation is the key to unlocking the power of hybrid cloud?

2. Upskill Technical Staff to Benefit Your Environment

Maximizing the ROI in hybrid cloud requires upskilling existing staff. Cloud and on-premises skill sets differ, and it’s important to bridge this gap by offering training opportunities.

Some businesses have made the mistake of taking this transformation too lightly by blindly jumping on the cloud bandwagon without any prior planning or training strategies. A comprehensive training plan to upskill staff can help a business thrive in a multicloud environment.

3. Automate On- and Off-Premises Workloads for Better Results

If you want to maximize the benefits of a true hybrid cloud infrastructure, consider automating on-premises workloads as a first step. Running a hybrid cloud effectively requires the adoption of patterns and practices consistently across whatever platform suits the application and workload, whether that means on-premises, in a public cloud or across multiple clouds. In practice, this requires aligning operations, personnel, organizations and processes to common frameworks and automation principles.

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