Companies are switching from the current public cloud model to a new model; they rely on a hybrid cloud consisting of a mixture of private and public clouds. With this form, companies can comply with legal regulations, guarantee data sovereignty, optimize costs and strengthen data security.

The cloud delivery model has been heralded as the game-changer of the IT business model for many years. And even as the essence of business and disruption in the digital age.

Cloud computing or “the cloud” is at the center of the technological developments that have led us to the current waves of accelerated innovation and optimization that we call digital transformation.

Despite the enormous role of the cloud in a multitude of changes in the way we work, use applications, organize IT, and much more; In the end, the introduction of cloud services took a relatively long time. And a mature approach to the cloud is often still missing.

The Popularity And Success Of The Cloud

We have been using the ASP (Application Service Provider) model for software for a growing number of applications since the second half of the 1990s. A few years later, we switched to the cloud with SaaS (Software as a Service). The cloud rapidly gained attention towards the end of the last millennium and at the beginning of the new millennium.

Virtually everyone in the industry expected cloud adoption to explode, but for many reasons, it didn’t. Around this time, the narrative began to change, away from selling the cloud model towards depicting use cases for cloud computing at all levels. That was the end of the hype, even if some still see the cloud as the hype.

So, all in all, it took over a decade and a half for the cloud to become mainstream, even if there are still some challenges, not least at the strategic level. Nowadays, however, it is clear that the cloud has changed the business model of IT in the meantime. This enables companies to change their business models and processes more quickly and on a larger scale.

The Shift From Traditional Benefits To Tangible Transformation

If we look at the cloud delivery model and cloud services as a whole (private, public, hybrid cloud; SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, etc.), we still see a relatively limited acceptance in some areas in which the same questions and Debates emerge that we have had for the past decade.

While some of these debates are undoubtedly important, the discussions about the benefits of one approach to the cloud over another are becoming increasingly stale. The fact is, we’ve talked about the cloud as a thing for far too long and started too late to describe its benefits and challenges.

A reality that we sometimes forget is that almost all businesses today use one or more cloud forms. It just doesn’t always happen through IT and rarely in a strategic and coordinated way.

At the same time, however, something changes when it comes to the cloud. In the early years, there was a lot of focus on ad hoc operations for specific business purposes and on mixed approaches that allowed companies to test the new models with not too many risks.

The benefits of cloud computing have mainly been sold from a more traditional perspective of the cost of rapid deployment, independence from IT in the SaaS space, and their agility.

Today this picture is changing. While the traditional benefits keep coming up, organizations see the cloud as a way to innovate, create value, and speed up business. However, the gaps in maturity and lack of an integrated approach to the hybrid reality of different cloud implementations remain.

Where Do We Stand With The Cloud?

Cloud adoption continues to grow, and after missing some growth expectations again, 2019-2020 was a turning point. In the years after that, we see rapid developments, accelerated growth, and essential shifts in what is being moved to the cloud and how.

In 2020, a survey showed that 64% of companies have some cloud strategy. Note the presence of the word “strategy.” It’s not that the other 36% of respondents aren’t using the cloud one way or another.

Thirty percent of companies had already migrated to the cloud or planned to migrate all of the workloads asked for. However, the challenge remains, most companies continue to improve their cloud strategies as more and more of them live in multi-cloud realities.

Plus, it’s not just about the dramatic shifts in how companies invest more in the cloud. What we are seeing is that the types of services moving to the cloud are more business-critical. In addition, the market for public cloud services is increasing.

IaaS ( Infrastructure as a Service ) is the fastest-growing segment in 2021, even if it is not the largest. The two most significant segments are Cloud Business Process Services or BPaaS and the good old SaaS.

This strong growth reflects the shift away from legacy IT services to cloud-based services, driven by the increasing trend of companies pursuing a digital business strategy.

Although the discussions about the type of cloud deployment (public, private, …) can be expected to be over, it is interesting to see the state of investment in cloud infrastructure in a cloud adoption reality that is hybrid.

Hybrid Cloud And Cloud Brokerage

As mentioned earlier, there are several developments and shifts in cloud computing and strategies to achieve an integrated and strategic approach in a hybrid cloud reality.

By this hybrid cloud reality, we don’t even necessarily mean the hybrid cloud delivery model as such. First and foremost, we suggest that companies look for solutions to manage their entire mixed reality, where multiple cloud implementations, models, and services are diverse.

These strategies are driven, among other things, by the clear need for a more sophisticated cloud approach. In which control, flexibility, and choice meet the requirements of the cloud as an enabler for digital transformation and optimization strategies.

This is one of the reasons why there is an increasing provider focus on a cloud brokerage approach in addition to the de facto reality of the hybrid cloud delivery model, even if this is a very complex approach that requires at least as much advice as to when it comes to connecting different clouds and resources and making them easier to manage and control via a management platform.

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