Three Essential Questions on Making the Switch to Hybrid IT
Thu 14 Apr 2016 | Jamie Tyler
Why should companies look at investing in hybrid IT? What advantages can they gain from it?
JT: Some organisations come to us and just want a transactional service and that’s fine. We’re cool with that ‒ if they want 15 CPUs and x amount of RAM and some storage capabilities, we can provide it.
Others want much more. They want to divulge some of their responsibilities; usually starting with those which are not central to the business. The CIOs don’t want or need to run a big IT department, which ultimately has a high cost associated with it. They also realise that specialists can quite often do the job better – keeping data more secure, providing a more robust cloud environment or simply a newer, faster, more agile way of doing things – than they could do themselves.
What are the hidden costs of running an in-house IT system?
JT: There is a big investment of time and money in regards to running in-house IT systems. Beyond the infrastructure itself, there are added costs of powering, maintaining and staffing the IT system. In addition to that, adding the application on top of the IT system adds another layer of complexity and expense.
If businesses want to remain competitive from a technology standpoint, they must also be prepared to make regular investments in updating their in-house IT infrastructure as well as ongoing training and development for their staff.
This is why many organisations work with a managed services provider to run these some or all of these processes. Choosing which systems to outsource and which to keep in-house is the essence of Hybrid IT; organisations can benefit from a fully-managed, integrated and comprehensive IT ecosytem that offers the flexibility needed to customise and build optimised cloud processes to support the business as needed.
How much will companies typically spend per month on hybrid IT services?
JT: In reality, if you know how much you want to spend each month, the likelihood of the cloud being a great fit isn’t real. You may as well go back to a traditional hosting environment where you look for the safety and security of predictable usage patterns and can drive economies of scale by knowing when and where you are going to need computing or storage facilities.
But of course, that doesn’t give you the flexibility of cloud. With cloud services, you pay for what you use; so the more you use, the more you pay.
What cloud does give you is clarity and flexibility. Customers will be able to predict their costs based on their data usage. You can be as granular over the processes involved in cloud computing – or not; customers can have the visibility and the control over the system, or not, depending on their preferences.
For us, it is about providing the level of control and visibility that actually a good business wants to have to ensure they can afford what they are playing with. Making the investment in a hybrid IT ecosystem is essential to transforming IT from a cost centre to a business driver.
