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When a category 4 hurricane hit the U.S. Gulf coast, the rebooking system of a large international airline was being stressed. Fortunately, IBM had just helped the airline implement a dynamic rebooking system on the cloud that was in final testing. The airline decided to turn on the new system, which scaled up and managed to rebook thousands of passengers’ tickets automatically.
“It would have been difficult to do this on-premise because we just wouldn’t have had enough capacity to handle thousands of flights being changed,” says Ted Tritchew, distinguished engineer and chief technology officer, Cloud Consulting, Canada Consulting for IBM.
The hybrid approach combines an on-premises infrastructure, the public cloud and private cloud systems. That makes for a unified and flexible distributed computing environment. Organizations can run and scale their traditional or cloud-native workloads on the most appropriate computing model.
For businesses, the hybrid cloud is now the dominant model. In one survey, over 80 per cent of IT leaders said it’s the preferred approach. A hybrid cloud solution can leverage what’s already existing in a corporate data centre, while also increasing efficiencies, improving productivity and accelerating speed to market and innovation.
“Fundamentally, that’s why organizations are going to cloud. It’s the flexibility and elasticity, not having to scale out their data centres to maximum capacity to handle predictive loads,” says Mr. Tritchew.
Still, organizations such as financial institutions or government departments may not be able to move their information fully to a cloud-based system, because of regulations or security reasons, which means a lot of data is still stored on site. That’s where hybrid enables an adaptable strategy.
IBM says the hybrid cloud helps organizations achieve their technical and business objectives more effectively and cost-efficiently than public cloud or private cloud alone. A study across industries found that companies derive up to two-and-a-half times the value from the hybrid cloud than from a single-cloud, single-vendor approach.
“A hybrid cloud solution allows you to work in a common framework across platforms,” says Mark Dymond, senior partner, Hybrid Cloud Services Leader, Canada Consulting at IBM. “Now all of a sudden, both development and operations become more efficient, using common tools across the entire scope of your IT landscape. That allows me to move at the pace I want and build what I want, where I want.”
The advantages of the right cloud computing solution can range from generating cost savings, to keeping up with the demands of their customers, to dealing with their highest-volume transactions. Cloud also enables agility and innovation in people and organizational processes.
“Many of our clients found that if they didn’t get the cloud, or didn’t get their data centre sizing correct, they have problems processing orders on Black Friday,” says Mr. Tritchew. “With a hybrid cloud model, you can be sure that you’re going to have enough resources on your busiest days.”
Another plus is the ability to get a product on shelves quicker than ever. By building testing environments more efficiently and on demand in the cloud, companies can bring their offering to market more rapidly. That saves money too, which is why you can’t just focus on up-front costs.
“Let’s say your testing finishes two months sooner. While you may have spent more on infrastructure, you saved a huge amount of time and went to market much faster,” says Mr. Tritchew.
He says accessing all the benefits can be challenging if organizations don’t onboard the hybrid cloud correctly. It’s important to have a sound plan and partner in place before jumping in. That means picking the right vendor model and vendor, training staff, identifying an overall target operating model for the cloud and having an internal team dedicated to getting the organization to make the shift to the cloud.
As more cloud technology becomes available, organizations should also be nimble.
“You should be willing to evolve your cloud strategy over time and expect to,” says Mr. Dymond. “Cloud is changing more quickly than any other technology has changed.”
He adds that while cloud computing is complex, that aspect isn’t passed on to the user. “The electrical network that powers your house is complicated, but plugging in the toaster isn’t because the complexity is happening behind the scenes.”
The cloud is also about staying relevant and being able to use the latest in technology. Machine learning, artificial intelligence and data science technology continue to become more ingrained in every aspect of business. As they do, organizations will be challenged to keep up and many of the current on-premises systems simply can’t handle this kind of technology.
“If you want to use a tool like ChatGPT or a large body of data that you’ve curated, you need an environment like the cloud,” says Mr. Dymond. “As the corpus of data grows over time, that’s a perfect use case for the cloud.”
On May 17, 2023 The Globe and Mail hosted a webcast, presented by IBM, featuring IT leaders from multiple industries who shared their strategies for what companies can do to optimize their cloud-based operations. Click here to watch that video.
Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio with IBM. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.