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Adoption of hybrid cloud: One foot onsite and the other on the cloud

Companies are transitioning to the cloud, but not entirely, as concerns over data privacy and cyberattacks grow.

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Quantumrun Foresight
January 27, 2023

Even as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) has become commonplace among the world’s top businesses, so has the use of hybrid cloud solutions. Mainly due to cybersecurity reasons, select companies are keeping some of their processes onsite instead of completely relying on the cloud.

Adoption of hybrid cloud context

Cloud computing has greatly changed since Amazon Web Services (AWS) was introduced to the public in 2006. As of 2022, we're in an era of hyperscale cloud providers, where only a handful of companies control the Cloud market. Because each platform utilizes different software components and infrastructure options, they don't tend to work together smoothly.

This lack of interoperability is due to these services having few industry standards. Since various cloud providers offer different managed versions of open-source software, the abilities and features will also vary. Therefore, skills learned from using one provider may not be useful for another.

In some cases, this lack of interoperability may mean shifting away from hyperscale cloud providers. Many enterprises use more than one platform, which could be on purpose. For example, users might want to create hybrid or multi-cloud solutions that prevent being locked into one vendor or because different departments within the same company have independently started using various providers.

Bigger companies usually have invested a lot of money in their own data centers, so it often makes sense for them to use a combination of on-premise (private) and public clouds. In addition, data privacy worries, sector-specific requirements, and constantly changing regulatory issues have become a pressing concern. As a result, hyperscale cloud providers and other third-party vendors are seeking ways to make it easier for their customers to create multi-cloud or hybrid cloud solutions.

Disruptive impact

According to software company Altaro's 2022 survey of IT professionals, 67 percent of respondents said they plan to permanently use hybrid cloud solutions instead of slowly transitioning to cloud-native infrastructures. About 34 percent said they prefer a hybrid cloud because of privacy and trust issues with the public cloud, which is why they keep some workloads onsite. More experienced individuals were more likely to distrust cloud platforms than those with less experience. It appears that permitting access to company data and operation via a cloud platform requires a leap of faith for many people.

However, the adoption of a hybrid cloud has its challenges. About half of the respondents cited monitoring and security as primary concerns. As a result, most participants said they are using multi-factor authentication and conditional access to enhance security. People are mainly worried about losing control, having poorer monitoring, and less security when they move their workloads to the cloud instead of keeping them on-premise.

In a 2022 study conducted by IBM among India-based IT businesses, 85 percent of respondents have adopted a hybrid cloud solution. Similar to the Altaro survey, respondents in the IBM survey indicated cybersecurity and data governance as the primary challenges that hinder them from fully transitioning their workload to the cloud. Approximately 57 percent find compliance in the cloud difficult, and 33 percent stated regulatory problems as a primary obstacle to incorporating functions across private and public IT systems.

Implications of adoption of hybrid cloud

Wider implications of the adoption of a hybrid cloud may include:

Companies increasingly creating their own data centers to manage sensitive data and operations, only outsourcing some processes to the cloud as needed.

Developers migrating their serverless applications to different platform providers, depending on pricing and features.

Cloud providers creating customized offerings or services for certain firms to take advantage of the growing popularity of hybrid cloud solutions.

Businesses using hybrid cloud options to enhance edge computing processes, bringing data and services closer to consumers. This application may improve the performance of autonomous machines, robotics, and vehicles in various industries.