The future of cloud computing is a hybrid cloud

Findings from commissioned by Vanson Bourne at Rackspace We can easily see that for IT decision makers in UK and US companies, while the public cloud remains important, the limitations of using this type of platform as a total solution are becoming More and more obvious.

According to the survey, these limitations caused many respondents to start moving to a hybrid cloud infrastructure where public clouds, private clouds, and dedicated servers work in some combination to run some applications or workloads.

The future is a hybrid cloud

The study by Rackspace was conducted by independent technology market research firm Vanson Bourne, who studied the different types of cloud computing (public, private and hybrid) and specialized servers used by businesses in the United Kingdom and the United States. The survey found that 60% of respondents have been or are considering moving some applications or workloads partially (41%) or completely (19%) out of the public cloud because of the limitations of the public cloud or other platforms Potential advantages, such as hybrid clouds.

The survey also showed that the majority (60%) of IT decision-makers view hybrid cloud as the "climax" of their cloud computing journey rather than as a stepping stone to using public cloud to address all their cloud needs.

John Engates, Chief Technology Officer at Rackspace, said: "Our findings show that hybrid clouds are the next step for many businesses and may start using public cloud architectures, but now they have come to recognize the limitations of this approach. The move to hybrid clouds, because hybrid clouds combine the benefits of public clouds, private clouds, and proprietary servers, can enable them to tailor the systems that best fit them. "

For example, businesses do not need to run their own large databases in the public cloud - this can be problematic as organizations can take advantage of hybrid clouds to run databases more efficiently and back to the public cloud when necessary.

Darren Roberts of Action for Children, one of Britain's largest and most famous charities, said: "In the past we used public clouds to run many applications and workloads, but as we expanded we found that some of the applications Became so complex that they were not able to operate in a public cloud environment, and we then chose a hybrid cloud solution to ensure that we had enough control over the infrastructure while enjoying performance, reliability, security and cost advantages. "

Action for Children uses Rackspace's hybrid cloud to gain privacy, security, and control over proprietary servers while leveraging public clouds as necessary. A dedicated server, located within the agency's data center but managed by Rackspace, is used to host sensitive data about children and families. The Rackspace public cloud is used to solve the peak network demand. Using the same cloud computing for big data analytics, the agency places data on anonymous customers, donors and fundraisers so that it can provide a customized online experience for its diverse user communities to increase its engagement and Support efforts.

Many advantages of hybrid clouds

Rackspace's research also found that nearly three-quarters (72%) of respondents are using hybrid clouds (at least part of their application portfolio is in use) and that U.S. companies (80%) use it more than UK businesses (64%) More. The main reason for using hybrid cloud was that respondents said using hybrid cloud to handle some applications or workloads resulted in better security (52%), more control (42%), As well as better performance or reliability (37%).

In addition, the benefits that hybrid cloud users say they have experienced with hybrid clouds include more control (59%), better security (54%), better reliability (48%), lower Cost (46%) and better performance (44%). Specifically, the use of hybrid clouds reduces overall cloud computing costs by an average of 17%, based on the data for those businesses that have seen cost reductions.

Matt McClure, MapMyFitness vice president and chief architect, said: "We have no reason to shut down, especially since the world has now evolved into a social and digital life that needs to be always online and real-time." We manage data for 17 million users worldwide Expected to double next year), we did not allow downtime, so we chose hybrid cloud computing. "