In recent weeks, each of these companies has moved toward accommodating big businesses with potential hybrid cloud applications. Hybrid cloud, if you’re not up to date on the latest buzz phrases circling the IT world, is a combination of both on-site data centers and cloud infrastructure, the latter usually supplied by a third-party provider.
Earlier this week, IBM acquired software broker Gravitant to bolster it’s hybrid cloud play. Gravitant helps companies buy and manage cloud computing services from multiple vendors. It’s the latest in a string of cloud-related acquisitions in recent years by IBM, including SoftLayer, Cloudant, and Cleversafe.
Also this week, Microsoft partnered with Red Hat, a former rival company that makes a version of the Linux server-side operating system. Users of Microsoft Azure, the software giant’s cloud service, will now better support hybrid cloud applications. This is an interesting move by Microsoft, as Azure actually leads AWS in enterprise public cloud services, according to Wikibon. Encouraging hybrid cloud environments could cannabalize Microsoft’s public cloud business.
And don’t forget about the recently merged Dell-EMC. Michael Dell himself says the company’s VMWare virtualization and cloud service arm is “well-positioned” to take advantage of opportunities in hybrid cloud computing, possibly providing end-to-end enterprise cloud solutions.
See: Why Dell isn’t dead: the cloud is a storage location, not a storage medium
Betting on hybrid
So far, the numbers weigh in favor of HP, IBM, and Microsoft. The hybrid cloud market will outstrip the overall IT market between now and 2019, with a projected annual growth rate of 27 percent according to research firm MarketsandMarkets. The hybrid cloud market was worth over $25 billion in 2014.
Exactly how a hybrid cloud model best suits enterprises is still up for discussion. Some see it as a two-way street, in which an on-premises app could benefit from cloud extensions, such as druing a spike in sales traffic on Black Friday. Vice versa, apps hosted in the cloud can reap the benefits of on-site capabilities.
Another use case is big data processing. Sensitive data is kept on a private cloud, but analysis of that data takes place on a public cloud that can scale to support such demanding tasks.
“Toyota Auris Hybrid Logo” by Dein Nordrhein-Westfalen licensed under CC BY 2.0
