451 Research recently released the results of a fascinating survey. The survey explored “the specific approaches enterprises are planning to take in terms of relocating their data platform workloads to the cloud, as well as why some existing workloads will remain on-premises and why some new workloads are going to be deployed on traditional server infrastructure.” Important reading for anyone interested in the future of hybrid IT.
The 451 Research report confirms what we at Pepperdata see amongst our users: There may be a huge trend of businesses adopting and leveraging the cloud for their data platform workloads, but there are existing as well as new data processes that are best done using on-premises IT infrastructure. A hybrid IT approach remains the most viable option for many enterprise organizations.
Total Data Migration: The Minority Approach
As shown in the 451 Research survey, only 23% of business organizations said they are planning a full data migration to the cloud—that is, a comprehensive “lift and shift” of their current on-premises data workloads to cloud-based IT environments. 37% of the respondents were looking to either replace their on-premises data platforms with off-premises solutions or re-architect for off-premises environments.
By contrast, the survey indicated that more business enterprises (25%) plan to redesign their present infrastructure using cloud-native frameworks without abandoning or moving their data platform workloads from traditional on-premises servers. It may look like the business world is moving towards total cloud adoption and implementation when in fact, many organizations prefer a hybrid cloud environment for their data workloads.
Learn more in this blog post: Can You Rein In Runaway Hybrid Big Data Costs?
Hybrid IT: The Balanced Approach
People often assume that a full digital transformation means a full shift of all data and processes to the cloud. But most enterprises want something more balanced.
Business leaders say that their motivations to modernize their on-premises IT infrastructure and adopt a hybrid IT environment instead of going full cloud include: enhanced data/system security (43%), data locality/sovereignty (37%), and leverage of existing IT investments (34%).
According to the 451 Research report, enterprises are approaching hybrid IT executions in a variety of different ways:
- Architect/design using cloud-native data platforms, deploy with off-premises cloud: 30%
- Architect/design using managed SaaS/off-premises/cloud: 28%
- Architect/design using cloud-native platforms, deploy with on-premises cloud: 20%
- Architect/design and deploy off-premises using cloud IaaS: 8%
We understand why many business leaders are leaning toward a hybrid approach. However, a hybrid IT environment does come with its challenges. A hybrid environment can easily produce unmonitored issues and vulnerabilities if it is not properly managed. At Pepperdata, we strive to offer a selection of products that ensure that a hybrid cloud environment is operating at maximum capacity around the clock.
Pepperdata Platform Spotlight monitors your platform and generates a real-time, correlated view of all components and applications. It gathers and analyzes a full suite of performance metrics and makes intelligent recommendations to optimize workloads and alert on performance events. Pepperdata Capacity Optimizer automatically optimizes your hybrid IT environment by pinpointing inefficient workloads and recapturing wasted resources so that your big data stack can perform more tasks over time, increasing throughput by up to 50%, reducing backlogs, preventing overspending, and boosting overall efficiency. By using its managed autoscaling for your cloud instances, Capacity Optimizer ensures all nodes are fully utilized before additional nodes are added, eliminating waste and reducing costs.
Read more about managed autoscaling in the cloud in this blog post: Introducing Managed Autoscaling to Reduce Cloud Computing Cost.