The explosion of data and devices in addition to the continued focus on controlling and reducing operating expenses has accelerated the adoption of both public and private cloud computing. Making data-driven decisions and acting quickly on new ideas helps to deliver outstanding customer and user experiences and achieve success. To support this new paradigm, IT is addressing the needs of both traditional three-tier applications and new cloud-native applications, each with a different set of priorities.

For existing workloads, IT departments are looking to reduce costs and improve performance and efficiency. For cloud-native workloads, the priorities are around access to new cloud services such as containers for artificial intelligence or machine learning platforms. To address the specific needs of workloads, organizations are moving toward adopting public and private clouds.

However, operating in multiple clouds comes with another set of challenges, including operational silos, different management and operations tools, complex workload migrations, security concerns, and inconsistent SLAs. These problems are byproducts of the lack of consistent infrastructure and operations across clouds, slowing cloud adoption and limiting its effectiveness.

To overcome this complexity, the ideal choice for organizations is to embrace a consistent hybrid cloud strategy for both public and private clouds, allowing for the optimal deployment of workloads. According to research from analyst firm ESG (IDC Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, Q1, 2019, June 2019), half of organizations formulating hybrid cloud strategies have cited seamless compatibility with their on-premises infrastructure as their most important consideration. In other words, they need a hybrid cloud strategy that eliminates multicloud complexity, while providing flexible deployment options for high-value workloads.