Analysis: Hybrid cloud Platform is the inevitable trend of future development

Today it organizations are awash with dazzling options for private clouds, public clouds, mixed clouds and, of course, internally deployed facilities. According to Mark White of Deloitte Consulting, and Bill Briggs, most organizations are not limited to a cloud platform, but are simultaneously dealing with multiple sets of cloud platforms.

Because cloud products are capable of providing significant vertical business capabilities for IT service capabilities, so the question of whether or not to deploy in the past has become the "when" to deploy today, and most agencies often give the answer is "immediately", Deloitte Consulting company head and CTO White and the chief and Deputy CTO Briggs the above view in their report, "2012 Technology development Trends: how it progress is matched to digital commerce", which they co-authored last week. "With the deepening of our sense of identity, organizations have put aside the cautious approach of the past and have been bold in sourcing different kinds of cloud products from a number of public and private cloud providers to deal with the key businesses that are common in the business." ”

In other words, we should not dwell on the concept of public cloud and private cloud. A hybrid cloud platform composed of at least one set of public and private clouds is the inevitable trend of future development. In fact, both white and Briggs think companies are increasingly looking to move their various applications and infrastructure services to the cloud platform. Deloitte calls this scheme a "super hybrid cloud", in which different types of clouds are linked to each other's core.

"In any application instance, each cloud product needs to be tightly linked to the business core, and the approach is often a data-driven, traditional facility integration solution," they explained. "In a further development, institutions will gradually become accustomed to crossing a series of different cloud products that have not yet been finalized, connecting the point-to-point connection form with the old system and data, and finally making it the primary platform for dealing with all the day-to-day and unexpected business workflows."

This process of transition from ' single cloud ' to ' composite Cloud ' also brings new challenges to technicians in addition to integrated security, data integrity and reliability, and even business process rule management. Under the great pressure, the enterprise IT organization can only integrate one or more of its own service items, so as to adapt to the problems posed by composite cloud platform under the new situation. ”

While meeting these challenges, the IT department needs to be well prepared for the facilities and, as such work is slow, the innovation of cloud services within the agency must be as fast as possible.

"We have to remind people that some of their employees are trying to tinker around the facility 51 days a week, and that the idea of everything moving to the cloud platform in Monday is almost impossible," said Mike Ehrenberg, a technical researcher at the Microsoft Business Solutions team. "In fact, we may have to face the business in a long period of time on both the traditional and the cloud platforms," he said. ”

Unless institutions themselves come up with a well-planned plan, it is easy to connect the various types of service items to the installation components that will undoubtedly be a slap-and-pull combination, white and Briggs.

"Integration, master data management, and enterprise architecture have historically been important pillars of modern IT organizations and their status has been further enhanced by the widespread spread of composite cloud solutions," they said. "As more and more business leaders decide to introduce cloud products into the organization and become part of the traditional IT department, the underlying business processes are flooded with a number of different kinds of cloud projects, and in the face of this, the organization itself must devise a rigorous and workable integration and coordination plan." All in all, those who preach ' free it ' values must change their stance, because this theory is no longer appropriate for the current enterprise application instance. ”

On the way to address this problem, some agencies are looking to outsource cloud services (CSB). Gartner has discussed such examples in the article "Case study: Mohawk Hardcover products company uses CSB to cope with cloud computing deployments." Mohawk is the largest manufacturer of high-end paper products in North America, with only six IT staff, but needs to build an soa-based Backplane program to support all types of applications, service projects, and data content within and outside the company.

"Mohawk has taken a serious look at a range of options that focus on addressing cloud services integration, and is looking for quality suppliers that can provide the integration and platform of services that are covered by cloud computing," explains Benoit Lheureux, a Gartner analyst. "The Mohawk company decided to use external resources to address this challenge for cost control of product integration and to minimize the consideration of existing IT support teams in the integration process." ”

Mohawk finally decided to work with liaison, a company specializing in the integration and coordination of cloud services, capable of managing all types of business relationships and related contacts that customers need, and being able to deliver complex program processes in a transparent manner to Mohawk company monitoring. Liaison's services for Mohawk include: making the necessary facilities integration and supply chain integration adjustment for the latter's 300 customers, 100 material suppliers and other external e-business partners, and aligning the final Solution with the third cloud service provider that the enterprise has adopted as an intermediary.

"Mohawk Company has made it clear that handling integrated transactions through outsourcing is also an embodiment of enterprise competitiveness, which shifts the focus of development strategy (from prior acquisition integration technology and reliance on development work standards) back to the core competencies of managing its business processes and master data. Lheureux wrote in the article. "For example, when the enterprise needs a reliable currency exchange mechanism to handle additional local paper product trading activities, it is more dedicated than at the facility level or custom interface, It is better to rely on the help of liaison to integrate and expand the off-the-shelf international currency trading services of Strikeiron into its SOA backplane.

While liaison focuses on solving such problems at the technical level, Mohawk itself can take the time to seriously incorporate external services into its own applications and business processes, thereby succeeding in the face of new business requirements. ”

(Responsible editor: Duqing first)