Cloud is no more just a fancy way for IT delivery, but it is now a serious mainstream approach to IT services, being considered by one and all. But moving to cloud is not really that simple. It requires companies to do evaluation of their OpEx and Capex to understand whether it is really worth moving their IT consumption to the Cloud or is it better to do-it-your-way and manage it on-premise. Some very prudent questions to be asked before defining your cloud strategy are:

1. Is it technically feasible to move all the IT services to the cloud at one go? Or should there be a staggered approach?
2. For which IT services does it make sense to go for cloud instantly?
3. How much cost saving will the cloud bring in?
4. How will the performance be affected?
5. Will the data be secured at the cloud data center?
6. Will our services be secured in public cloud or do we need private cloud?
7. How much time will it require to roll out cloud solutions?
8. Are the customers ready for the change too?

The answer to the above questions will vary depending on the nature and size of your business. Usually for SMEs it makes a good business sense to go for public cloud services entirely as they find it cost intensive to set up IT infrastructure and manpower to run it. Moreover their IT utilization is also usually not to the full capacity. In such instances, utilizing IT services through cloud computing makes a good business use case.

There are also some processes which, if automated through applications, toss momentum in teams and improve their productivity. In such instances, an organization could either buy application software to be managed on-premise and then keep adding upgrades every year (at least) and spend some more time on writing integration code to make it talk to other components in the entire IT stack. Or go for hosted application with just a few clicks of a button. For example, introducing application lifecycle management tool with collaboration features could either be in traditional format or in web-based/hosted solution format. Naturally, going by the nature of your requirement here, you will benefit highly out of using the cloud version (web-based/hosted).

Moving ahead, at the enterprise scale, the story would be slightly different. Their data management requirement could be very different both from security and storage point of views. This could lead them to consider the deployment of cloud computing at staggered levels. They may opt for private cloud and public cloud together, more commonly known as hybrid cloud. Implementing hybrid cloud brings in the much needed operational efficiencies to the large enterprises. This makes hybrid cloud as the most wanted form of IT stack at enterprise scale.

Such high interest in hybrid cloud is purely because the enterprises want to mitigate the risks arising out of the public cloud. Large enterprises have no doubt that cloud computing will benefit them. And the drawbacks of private cloud (namely high investment, maintenance and new operational costs) do not scare them. So, for some functions and processes, the large enterprises go for public clouds whereas for some crucial and high risk processes, they go for private cloud.

In essence, due to following combined advantages of public and private clouds, hybrid cloud will be seen as defining the next enterprise IT stacks:

1. Low investment and integration hurdle in some processes and hence instant public cloud deployment in certain areas.
2. Scalability and reduced expenses through pay-per-use seen as great advantages for some functions.
3. Scope to avoid multi-tenancy risks of public cloud for crucial data applications and therefore opt for private cloud.
4. High capital investments not seen as a threat in the wake of advantages of avoiding the security risks in public cloud.
5. Full control over data centres through private cloud.

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