In Part 9 I focused on customer support, customer success and developer support. In this section will dive into hybrid cloud solutions. The focus again is on non-cloud companies transforming to cloud.
In this discussion of Hybrid Cloud I mean a combination of services running on your CUSTOMER premise augmented with those running in YOUR CLOUD. In some cases, it will be an existing system they bought from you in the past, which they now augment with a new product launched in the Cloud.
Hybrid cloud is an attractive model for several reasons: (generalizing)
- For an existing customer base, it’s less disruptive. It’s an addition vs. a replacement
- Customers continue deriving value from investments they’ve already made in servers, networking gear, and licenses
- Where sensitive information is involved, customers can decide to keep some data only on-prem, some in the cloud, and some synced in both locations
- Increased reliability, as if your connectivity to the cloud goes down (which is a rare occasion these days, but does happen) you can still keep some systems running
- Regulatory requirements may play a role as well: for example, in a global organization, some data has to stay in its own country while other data can be anywhere. Therefore, you would appropriately divide it between on-prem (numerous locations) and Cloud
There are also disadvantages:
- There is added complexity, and sometimes cost, of managing many sites: Maintenance, operations, HW & SW upgrades, Security patching, OS updates, network upgrades and more. When you buy a SaaS, the SaaS provider handles it all
- Moving data in and out of public Hyperscalers can be very costly so if your data payloads are very big – syncing it between on-prem and cloud can be costly
- There are risks of losing data integrity if sync problems occur
Some examples of segments that can benefit from hybrid cloud:
- Media production where payloads are huge and moving them in and out of public cloud can be very costly . With hybrid cloud they can choose where to put which piece of data to optimize cost
- A news broadcaster that can have no down time, can have 80% of the system in the cloud and 20% on-prem as backup
- A password storing company may choose to have its portal and some databases in the cloud yet store the most secure information on-prem where it has physical access to build and maintain its custom security system
Products where it may be better to go all-Cloud from day one:
- A real-estate listing service where most information is public, needs global access to the data and ability to upload from any device any time
- A chat service with users from all over the world
- A multi-player gaming service with players from the whole world
Some questions to ask yourself before deciding if moving your product completely to cloud or to a hybrid cloud structure:
- What are my customer needs regarding data volumes, security, regulatory compliance?
- What is my customer's readiness to move to cloud (is it too big a step to them to move 100% to cloud and hybrid cloud is an easier transition?)
- What are my costs choosing full Cloud vs. Hybrid cloud for specific new product?
- What are my customers costs choosing full Cloud vs. Hybrid cloud? Are they heavily attached to existing on-prem investments?
The above is only a partial list of considerations, but may help you in thinking about your next steps as you cloudify!
In the next section will dive into cloud security.
*** As usual, feel free to contact me at [email protected]?if you’re looking to engage with me on a consulting/advisory basis as an operating partner, fractional CXO and work on cloudification, transformation, turnaround, growth, product strategy, VC & PE advisory, or start-up mentoring. More here ***
