Five steps to hybrid cloud
Taking a step back and assessing your digital modernisation journey should be a regular process. Instead of heads-down in the thick of it, an occasional heads-up out of the parapet is a good idea to see where you’re heading. It provides an opportunity to assess goals and successes, and decide what to do next based on your objectives and current situation.
Cloud and hybrid cloud are key to digital transformation, enabling organisations to maintain business as usual as well as transform, differentiate and gain competitive advantage. In light of the current business climate, organisations are pushing ahead with cloud-first strategies, as they turn their attention to remote working. And while it might not be the ideal solution for all organisations, an increasing number of businesses have set their sights on a hybrid cloud strategy.
We’ve put together this guide on the steps to hybrid cloud. It helps you assess where you are on your digital transformation journey, and where you should be heading, to help reap the maximum benefits for your business. Read on to find out which step of the hybrid cloud journey you are on — and see what you’ll need to drive your organisation forward to the next step.
Let’s start with some definitions. Of course, definitions vary and are subjective. Our cloud definitions for the purpose of this guide are as follows:
The journey to hybrid cloud
Read on to see how we categorise the steps to hybrid cloud. Use this guide to find out where you are and how you can move forward with digitalisation.
Step 1: Own private cloud
Your organisation is using your own private cloud and any move to public cloud is restricted by governance and compliance issues — or there’s a lack of impetus or budget. You can see the benefits of upgrading your private cloud environment, but you don’t have the time or ability — and getting internal buy-in is challenging.
Where Proact can help: If you’re on Step 1, Proact will talk to you about taking the next steps towards digital transformation. These can be small steps — you don’t have to rush through the digitalisation process all at once. There are a number of discussion points we can cover to help you speed up digital transformation without spending a fortune. Some examples include colocation storage in a data centre facility, to O365, to Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). We help you take small steps that over time will add up to bigger changes.
Step 2: Migration
Your business is keen to reduce risk and operating costs by implementing greater cloud functionality, but you’re not sure what you need or how to get there.
Where Proact can help: At this point, we’ll talk you through your options, from Backup as a Service (BaaS), Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Service Management (SM), as well as colocation and connectivity. We create a proof of concept for you based on your objectives, so you can see how our recommended changes would positively impact your business.
Step 3: Hybrid
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You already have some Software as a Service (SaaS) elements in your infrastructure – maybe O365, Dropbox or Salesforce – and now you need to transform legacy operating systems and applications. You feel held back by limitations in knowledge and security.
Where Proact can help: Here we help you with goal setting, security services and dependency mapping to pave the way to increased digital transformation. We’ll talk to you about Proact Hybrid Cloud, our cloud platform that simplifies and delivers enterprise-class Infrastructure as a Service, with self-service capabilities and the ability to integrate with public cloud providers.
Step 4: Transformation
With successful migrations under your belt, you’re now ready to move further into a cloud environment to enable flexible consumption models for business applications and services. Rearchitecting and microservices are your focus areas and cloud is your main priority.
Where Proact can help: We work with you to design and implement your cloud infrastructure, extending services securely and cost effectively through public cloud. We assist in planning for and managing hybrid cloud, enabling multiple environments to communicate and share data with each other. There’s no reliance on any one product, so you are agile and free from vendor tie-in.
Step 5: Optimisation
Congratulations, you’re a cloud ninja! You have a serverless infrastructure and cloud accounts for a large proportion of your IT spend. You’re able to meet changing customer, business or external demands head on (such as a wholesale transition to remote working), without interruption or any slowdown to business continuity.
Where Proact can help: Here we help you optimise the environments you have in place, with greater visibility, control and governance alongside advanced security services. Of course, the process we follow is more detailed than we have room for here and it’s bespoke to each customer. However, we believe it’s helpful to visualise where you are heading on your digital transformation journey and we hope this article has outlined the next steps for you.
Talk to us about hybrid cloud
If you would like to talk to us about taking the next step on your digital transformation journey, talk to the team at Proact: [email protected]