In recent years, organizations have accelerated their digital transformation plans by investing in public clouds for greater speed and scale. But now, they are looking at what’s next for their multicloud strategy and evaluating which workloads run best in which cloud environments.
In Latin America, according to the latest study published by Dell Technologies, “The Innovation Catalyst”, the IT infrastructure in the region’s organizations is still very varied, however, hybrid (32%) and multi-cloud (27%) predominate. Traditionally, moving most workloads to the premises has been considered “repatriation”.
But what we’re seeing today is largely not so much a repatriation as a rebalancing, because organizations need to know which way to lean more in order to have the right balance in their portfolio. Today, on-premise infrastructure is more efficient, simpler to deploy, and now comes with flexible financial models.
As organizations better understand the economics of public clouds, and on-premises solutions evolve to be more flexible, they are revisiting their workload allocation strategy to make it more useful. Those that reside in the public cloud or were initially intended to migrate there are being revisited.
Organizations are analyzing their multicloud estate and working to find the right cloud mix based on “multicloud by design,” a successful multicloud strategy that helps reduce data complexity to optimize greater savings and better business decisions.
First, organizations need to understand cost, performance, availability, security, and compliance, as well as the right skill sets and staff for their IT needs. After that, they will learn the type of data and workloads best suited for deployments in private or public clouds.
Both options offer unique benefits, and it’s entirely possible to get the best of both worlds: the right applications, services, and workloads in the right cloud at the right time. How to think about “rebalancing.” Rebalancing requires a reassessment of needs. If your usage varies from month to month, chances are your costs will, too, making it difficult to predict public cloud spending.
According to a study on public clouds commissioned by Dell Technologies and TechTarget, 80% of organizations found that public cloud spending was higher than expected. In some cases, it can be easier and more cost-effective to optimize on-premises infrastructure, especially with new automation, tooling and compute capabilities, and avoid data egress fees altogether.
In others, public clouds may be preferable due to the variety of innovative development tools and speed of scale. Balancing your cloud budget may also mean adopting processes and tools that help you control, report and manage spending and ensure you are maximizing overall spend. Optimizing costs over the long term may mean avoiding contract lock-ins, even with their attractive discounts.
That’s where organizations can find themselves with undesired outcomes or limited flexibility, such as moving the wrong workloads or getting caught up in spending commitments beyond what was expected. Flexibility and choice are key when it comes to a multi-cloud-by-design approach across multiple environments. In the past, organizations’ only infrastructure choice was a lengthy Capex process. Then public clouds introduced Opex models, providing a more agile way to consume infrastructure, but flexibility came at a premium.
Now, on-premise providers offer a similar flexible payment model, giving choice back to customers based on workload and budget needs. Providers that offer a more elastic, on-demand approach to consumption allow for a level of investment and right-sized infrastructure for greater control, paying only for what you use.
These models have met in the middle, so you can now evaluate your options based on cost and workload requirements. Simplifying the cloud in a complex technology landscape According to the study cited above, 91% of organizations face challenges when creating a multi-cloud strategy to support innovation.
Cost and performance are not the only considerations in a world where data is widely distributed – think about security and data requirements. For highly sensitive data, private clouds may be more desirable to ensure data remains within an organisation.
Compliance requirements may even require critical workloads to reside in certain locations to comply with government regulations or prevent accidental loss or unauthorized access.
IT responsibilities have grown exponentially, especially with the rapid growth of AI applications and use cases, including generative AI that requires new skill sets. These new workloads will run in multiple environments – at the edge, on-premises, and across multiple clouds – creating more complexities for management.
It is essential that organizations apply the learnings from their multi-cloud strategy to their AI strategy to ensure that cloud spend does not catch them off guard. This is where multi-cloud by design shines; a mix of public and private clouds that provide scalability and flexibility, while ensuring data mobility and visibility. Rebalancing will require a recalibration to achieve the right cloud mix. This rebalancing is likely to continue in the coming years as more cloud-based applications and services shape future IT strategies.
Workloads moving on-premises today can return to the public cloud if that’s where they best meet current business needs, but enterprises will have greater ability to choose where they live with deeper strategic partnerships and technology integration. Be sure to look to the future with a strategy that leverages the power of the multi-cloud ecosystem and keeps your data secure to optimize your budget.
Written by Freddy Saavedra, Senior Director for Data Center Solutions at Dell Technologies
