Top 10 Reasons for a Hybrid IT Solution

Let's make two things loud and clear upfront: 

1. Hybrid IT is defined as “Utilizing a combination of on-premise IT services and cloud or colocation” from The Flexential Hybrid IT Study: A Solid Business Case for Mixed Infrastructure.
2. Hybrid IT is not just a transitional strategy—it's a calculated technology decision that makes logical business sense and can bring value to your organization.

Here's the thing about hybrid IT: It's commonly considered an awkward stage rather than a preferred choice. Just the word “hybrid” provokes mental imagery of uninformed organizations on a desperate journey to a cloud-only infrastructure, with just one reason for having on-premise or colocated environments: to allow themselves to take baby steps toward their utopian IT state. Sure, some businesses may choose a hybrid environment as a way to move toward the cloud gradually. That's not unheard of, but it's also not as common as people may think. Hybrid is not about transition. It's about maintaining an IT state that makes business sense. Only 16% of businesses have a hybrid environment because of a transition, according to the Flexential 2017 Hybrid IT study.  “One size does not fit all, from an infrastructure management perspective, nor from a PaaS or SaaS perspective. Hybrid allows us to choose when it is appropriate to host resources in-house, versus farming it out to our cloud platform such as Azure, or to allow the software vendor to be the service provider (SaaS).” – Flexential survey respondent The reality is that hybrid IT is a story of choice. Organizations choose hybrid IT deliberately, for a variety of unique reasons, but ultimately, they do it because it makes business sense. Not only that, but it offers flexibility. In fact, throughout the Flexential Hybrid IT study, the phrase “the best of both worlds” was used more often than any other descriptor for reasons to choose a hybrid environment.

So, What Are the Benefits of Choosing a Hybrid IT Solution?
 

1.Hybrid IT Infrastructure Can Contribute to Cost Savings 
Sixty-five percent of organizations believe that a hybrid IT infrastructure contributes to cost savings. Over half of organizations feel that hybrid IT saves them money. Conversely, according to IBM, a recent analysis of how businesses use both virtualization and public cloud revealed that some IT decision makers are actually dissuaded from hybrid IT because they're concerned about the costs. These hesitations are misguided, though; a properly designed hybrid infrastructure can generate return on an upfront investment quickly. Organizations using hybrid IT are 38% more likely to achieve a decrease in IT expenditure overall. 48% of ITDMs think that public cloud is the best infrastructure choice for saving money. 29% believe that an on-premise environment is best. Cloud, on-premise or colocation hosting could all theoretically bring cost savings. Budgetary end results depend on the requirements of a given organization, and their emphasis on achieving their specific technology goals versus meeting savings requirements.

“IaaS is a little easier to swallow. We bump up OpEx costs and take CapEx down a little bit. At [our company], 50% of the workforce has been working here for 25-plus years. Moving fast comes with a lot of resistance.” – Flexential survey respondent

2. Hybrid IT is Known for its Resilience and Reliability 
Nineteen percent of businesses opt for hybrid because of its resilience and reliability. A hybrid colocation model allows organizations to further customize technical services to meet their exact needs. In terms of reliability, platforms are typically chosen based on the best fit for the purpose, so it isn't necessary to keep a latency-sensitive application running in a public cloud, or concern yourself with the availability or uptime of an in-house, customer-facing CRM.

3. More Security and Compliance Options Exist with Hybrid IT Solutions
Security and compliance are also major incentives to opt for a hybrid environment, but “security” is something of a catch-all term in this context. Hybrid IT allows businesses to pick and choose the systems they'd like to keep on premise and those they'd like to either colocate or put into the cloud. The security benefit typically comes into play for the critical systems they keep on premise.

• ​​​​For some IT decision makers, “security” may mean something as simple as maintaining the most control when keeping a particular IT asset on-site; plus, some assets moved off-site may bring coinciding compliance issues.
• It's not necessarily about what the most secure cloud provider can offer; it's the peace of mind that comes from keeping critical applications and sensitive data within physical reach of the CIO.

4. Hybrid IT Offers Big Benefits with Scalability and Flexibility
Scalability is a real benefit in on-premise, colocated and cloud environments. Keeping part of an environment on-premise or in a colocation center allows you to add resources and make changes to accommodate higher demands fairly quickly. Administrators remain in complete control if management duties aren't outsourced. Cloud resources are always available, and also deliver scalability in that resources are provisioned on-demand, and generally faster than in an on-premise or colocated environment. Flexibility is a hybrid benefit across the board. IT organizations have the power to configure the platform as well as the resources required for the unique needs of each asset without limitations. Hybrid IT solutions allow businesses to maintain legacy systems or critical applications on-premise, but place other systems in a colocated or cloud environment when it makes sense. “Our infrastructure has had to scale dramatically. We have seasonal fluctuations. We have to be available and perform around the clock.”  –Flexential survey respondent

5. A Hybrid IT Solution Allows For an Easy and Gradual Transition to the Cloud
Here's the hybrid incentive that's a bit of a slippery slope: the “transitioning state.” This is not the No. 1 reason to use hybrid IT by any means. But the possibility of using hybrid IT as a gradual path toward the cloud is not unheard of for businesses who operate an infrastructure that will do fine in the cloud. It's rarely possible to simply cut the cord to the internal data center. Applications and processes are tied to it, and they aren't easily moved. It can be necessary to use both on-premise and cloud services for a period of time until some level of transition to the cloud is complete. Which raises the question—who wants all of their IT systems in the cloud? It's not an arrangement that works for everyone, but small organizations who can't afford the upfront costs of colocation are often a good fit for a total cloud environment.

6.Choose the Right Balance of Hybrid IT Solutions Based on Your Organization’s Needs
The right mix of on-premise, cloud and server colocation can actually make life easier and more efficient. That mix looks different for every business, but ultimately, a hybrid environment can optimize systems per their unique requirements, accelerating the delivery of services and applications. There are some applications, especially legacy ones, that just can't run in a cloud. Or perhaps they could, in theory, but they would require extravagant resources and tedious workarounds. These sorts of systems are just easier to host in-house, while applications that are written for the cloud can run in the cloud.

7.Some Systems are Better On-Premise
This one speaks for itself—there are some systems that are just better off on premise, and a number of scenarios that justify keeping them there:

• Legacy applications
• Security concerns
• Budgetary constraints

8. Manage Your IT Assets Better with Hybrid Services
Hybrid IT lets you choose the best platforms for supporting various systems, but having IT assets in disparate locations can make monitoring and management tricky. This is where partnering with an experienced hybrid IT partner will optimize the benefits of the environment itself. The right hybrid IT partner will provide:

• Managed infrastructure services
• Monitoring
• Management

9. Hybrid IT Means Innovating for the Future
Hybrid IT is a flexible way to accommodate the diverse technology goals of businesses of all sizes, reinforcing the multifaceted objectives of digital transformation that all decision makers grapple with. Innovation is a primary focus, and generating business value through new ideas and continuous delivery of services is critical for gaining a competitive edge. Overall, hybrid IT is about calculated choice that supports the accelerating pace of innovation, while also delivering stability and security.

10. Some Legacy Systems Will Need A Hybrid IT Strategy
As we discussed in No. 6, legacy systems are often left on-premise. It can be very difficult, if not impossible, to make a legacy system work in the cloud. It isn't worth the time or resources, yet the system is critical to business operations, so it somehow has to stay up and running through end of life.

Is Hybrid IT the Right Solution for You?

61% of organizations would intentionally choose a hybrid environment if starting from scratch. We know it's not just because you're on your way to the cloud. Today's business dynamics require a major overhaul to traditional IT infrastructure, and failure to adapt could leave some organizations behind. That's not to say that businesses who haven't gone hybrid should hurry up and upend their systems just for the sake of the cutting edge. Hybrid IT solutions are not just about greater convenience for IT—they're for total business benefit. To dig deeper into the reasons for hybrid IT, contact us at [email protected] or (877) 448-9378 to speak with one of our experts today.