Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 38 | Page 27

+ EDITOR’S QUESTION IAN JANSEN VAN RENSBURG – VMWARE SENIOR SYSTEMS ENGINEER /////////////////// M ulti-cloud, hybrid cloud, public cloud, private data centre. Whatever name you give it, they all have one thing in common: applications. Old, traditional and cloud-native applications. The majority of customers are already making use of the public cloud to access Software-as-a-Service applications like Microsoft’s Office 365. There are also several other examples such as Sales Force, Workday, Concur, Google Apps and Amazon Web Services. Most customers have a multi-cloud infrastructure, making use of old and traditional applications in their private data centre and the SaaS apps in the public cloud. Customers with large development teams prefer to work in the public cloud domain to ensure agility and a quicker time to market. Several other companies were even born in the cloud, such as Uber, PayPal and Airbnb. The big benefit for customers making use of their own data centre is that they have full control of the costs, security and the location of the data. The larger financial customers in South Africa are on a hybrid cloud journey. VMware is making it possible for these customers to run their old, traditional and cloud native application in their private data centre or seamlessly move it to any one of the VMware’s cloud partners (AWS, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, IBM and Alibaba). It should be all about choice that enables customers to get their applications quicker to the market in a secure, cost effective way. Hybrid cloud is driven primarily by IT operations teams who have established a proven model for infrastructure within the data centre. They are pursuing an extension to the data centre that gives them the flexibility to support their mission-critical applications, to rapidly migrate to the cloud www.intelligentcio.com “ THE BIG BENEFIT FOR CUSTOMERS MAKING USE OF THEIR OWN DATA CENTRE IS THAT THEY HAVE FULL CONTROL OF THE COSTS, SECURITY AND THE LOCATION OF THE DATA. with minimal cost and effort, to leverage the cloud for on-demand scale and extend the core processes required to support applications and infrastructure. The hybrid cloud journey is focused on creating a single set of resources that are both integrated and interoperable. Based on consistent infrastructure and consistent operations, the hybrid cloud architecture spans the private cloud, public cloud and edge. In order to support the needs of applications, organisations are pursuing a range of alternative initiatives to give the business access to the most powerful infrastructure services from any source. Most organisations are targeting multiple initiatives to varying degrees all at the same time, based on their individual needs. It is the rare exception for a company to be exclusively pursuing a data centre modernisation or a pure public cloud initiative. In summary, it’s really about business innovation and having the correct tools in place to support it. Some companies might opt for a public cloud only strategy, others hybrid but one thing remains, the customer experience. INTELLIGENTCIO 27