A future in hybrid multi - cloud
Featuring Ramkumar Narayanan VP Technology & Managing Director VMWare India
Seeing the necessity of change, we project ideals, and make ceaseless effort to adjust to a pattern and hope to transform ourselves. While superficial modifications take place, such pursuit does not bring about a radical transformation.
J. KrishnamurtiCurrent market trends unmistakably indicate a shift toward enterprises widely embracing hybrid multi-cloud strategies, encompassing data centers, private clouds, and various public clouds.
Instead of blindly pursuing a single option, successful cloud adoption requires a careful assessment of current infrastructure, alignment with business strategy and objectives, consideration of existing and emerging compliance requirements, and a thorough evaluation of long-term costs.
Consequently, a tailored approach to cloud implementation is the generally adopted strategic approach.
Although hybrid multicloud introduces complexity, it provides enterprises with the flexibility and opportunity to choose the most suitable cloud solutions, whether they be private or public clouds.
In this publication, we present insights from Ramkumar Narayanan, VP Technology and MD, VMWare India , as we investigate the driving forces compelling enterprises to choose hybrid multi-cloud as their strategic direction. Furthermore, we evaluate the tools and solutions aiding the transition to hybrid multicloud, while also exploring how enterprises are nurturing talent to adeptly manage the increasingly complex hybrid environments.
Sridhar Vedala Director, Futurewerk
Ramkumar Narayanan has an extensive understanding of datadriven, digital product innovation involving various consumers and enterprise markets. His expertise lies in product development, product management, and product marketing. He has been an advisor to enterprises, large and small, in the area of digital transformation, product strategy, and product marketing.
Prior to joining VMWare, Ramkumar has served in global leadership positions at eBay, Yahoo! and Microsoft. He started his career in the auto industry in the US developing software solutions for design and packaging of automotive suspension and powertrain systems. His work involves digital transformation led by customer journey, managing product development organizations, software product management and product marketing for consumer and enterprise products, new market development in emerging markets amongst others.
Ramkumar holds a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Anna University, Chennai, M.S. in Mechanical Engineering & MBA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
The emergence of the hybrid multicloud approach as a strategic choice by enterprises
The past few years were marked by the rise of public cloud, a trend that has revolutionized IT infrastructure, operations and application development. With Hyperscaler growth rates ranging from 25-60%, voices expecting all workloads to ultimately end up on public cloud became increasingly prominent. Today, we observe a slightly different reality; most enterprises, while well engaged on their cloud roadmaps, have adopted a multi-platform strategy covering traditional infrastructure and multiple cloud platforms.
Why is the idea of “one size fits all” no longer so attractive? The current reality shows that while significant workloads have been migrated to the public cloud, most enterprises become more cautious on costs and compliance. This has led to maintaining traditional infrastructure for significant parts of operations and tailoring cloud strategies to individual business and operational requirements.
Moreover, the maturation of the hybrid ecosystem and respective toolsets is enabling an easier orchestration between platforms and the setup of significant cloud capabilities within one’s own data center. A recent survey by Cisco covering 2500 IT decision makers revealed that 82% of all enterprises have adopted hybrid cloud and 47% use two or more public cloud providers.
VMware stands at the forefront of the hybrid cloud transformation, actively supporting enterprises in bridging the gap between their onpremises data centers and external cloud services.
Most enterprises have adopted a multi-platform strategy covering traditional infrastructure and multiple cloud platforms
§ cost
§ data compliance
§ control
§ architectural requirements
T he most important drivers for the adoption of the hybrid multi - cloud approach:
Rising public cloud costs
Increasing costs has put a dent in the aggressive public journeys of many companies. Several studies and accumulated practical experience have highlighted the cost challenges associated with solely operating in the public cloud at high consumption volumes. Furthermore, provisioning multiple zones to achieve high availability, while reducing operational risk adds to the overall cost sprawl many companies complain about.
Most companies now have a better understanding of cost curves and can determine the optimal balance between private and public cloud usage. Applications with variable resource demands can be hosted in a private environment, while leveraging public cloud capacity for peak demand periods. This is now easier to achieve and allows for a more efficient and costeffective workloadmanagement. It is indeed surprising to observe that certain workloads are migrated back to a private cloud infrastructure.
Data regulations and data residency requirements
Data residency and sovereignty compliance is a key driver in the growth of the private cloud. Strict compliance requirements, particularly in sectors such as finance, healthcare, and government, can often only be fulfilled on private platforms. While hyperscalers have significantly invested in segregated regional and sovereign networks, the concern of data being available too easily to US legislators remains. According to estimates by the World Economic Forum, 92% of the data in Europe and America is hosted on servers owned by a handful of US-based providers. To address this risk, many countries have initiated their own Sovereign cloud programs. These trends are not only making private cloud a strategic resource but also driving the expansion of local cloud service providers.
With increased handling of sensitive data, upholding sovereignty and data security, companies increasingly turn to the private cloud as the guardian of one’s data, while leveraging public cloud platforms when advantageous and relevant.
Workloads are being migrated from public cloud to private cloud
Control over location and performance
The emergence of Edgecomputing has drastically increased the need for one’s own dedicated and distributed infrastructure resources. Cloud computing infrastructure has expanded beyond centralized data centers towards the edge. Many organizations now possess more compute and storage resources at the edge than within their central data centers
Manufacturing firms in particular frequently deploy data-generating devices and sensors across their facilities, effectively extending core infrastructure to the operational edge and into new distributed environments.
This trend requires greater control over cost, performance, location accessibility, policy enforcement, and security. Private cloud strategies are often the most effective way to enhanced control while providing a certain level of flexibility.
Many organizations now possess more compute and storage resources at the edge than within their central data centers
Architectural requirements
The increasing complexity of application architecture leads to more varied and hybrid infrastructure platform decisions. Delivering enhanced customer experience has led to significant digital initiatives and therefore a general overhaul of the most significant applications within the enterprise context. While portfolios are gradually being modernized, the complexities created by the integration between old and new systems lead to increasing infrastructure challenges. Especially requirements around high application interdependencies, data transfer throughput and dynamic scalability require a customised approach. Part of the application stack can usually be optimised in public cloud containers offering unlimited scalability while legacy systems must stay within a specific location near other systems.
The choice and use of cloud services also drives platform choices to a significant extent. For example, while opting for Google Cloud to leverage TensorFlow might seem attractive, a combination of private and public cloud solutions may be better suited for specific use cases.
Architectural decisions often center around the choice of computing locations. The decision to transport data or bring computing power closer to the data source hinges on resource availability and architectural feasibility. Importantly, these are not one-time decisions but an ongoing process of continuous improvement that requires a degree of control and flexibility only provided by hybrid environments. This is a balancing act for most enterprises.
Part of the application stack can usually be optimised in public cloud containers offering unlimited scalability
The increasing maturity of the hybrid multi - cloud ecosystem
The VMware toolset
The toolset necessary for a private cloud setup has matured considerably. Not too long ago, there was a noticeable lack of integrated solutions to address the requirements of hybrid multi-cloud environments, and organizations were often left to chart their own course on this journey. This is likely one of the reasons why the adoption of enterprise digital transformation did not meet initial expectations.
Fortunately, there is now a wealth of mature tools and support readily available. Many leading service companies have established specialized practices dedicated to migrating and facilitating the transition to private and hybrid cloud environments.
VMware has itself undergone a transformation to provide solutions that better serve the hybrid journey. In the past, VMware products were offered as standalone, with vSphere and ESXi as the hypervisor, networking standards powered by NSX, a software-defined networking stack, block storage, and storage management via vSAN, along with a suite of management tools within the Aria portfolio. This approach posed challenges, especially in terms of lifecycle management.
VMware has itself undergone a transformation to provide solutions that better serve the hybrid journey
Products have since been integrated into a unified and cohesive platform known as VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), which functions as a private cloud. This platform includes connectors to public clouds allowing customers to have access to and efficiently manage their multi-cloud environment with a single deployment.
With Tanzu, VCF provides enhanced container capabilities allowing for the creation of a Kubernetes cluster that operates autonomously from the underlying cloud infrastructure. It seamlessly extends across both private and public clouds, presenting itself as a unified cluster for deployment purposes. The management of the backend is simplified through a consistent set of policies and tools.
Using VCF, clients can perform vMotion for the migration of virtual machines (VMs) across both private and public clouds with minimal downtime. This allows for an easy transfer running applications from one virtual machine to another without needing to shut it down. The application continues to operate without any noticeable disruptions. This capability is especially valuable when additional capacity is required, and applications can be migrated dynamically to run on public cloud platforms.
India based Global Capability Centers (GCCs) provide a significant portion of the talent pool required for technology development and services. The transition to and management of hybrid multi-cloud environments demand expertise in both application architecture and cloud operations. There is a significant global shortage of skilled talent driving enterprises to invest in training, recruitment, and talent development more intensively. Companies turn to India to access the substantial cloud talent pool, with a growing preference for establishing or expanding their own cloud Global Capability Centers (GCCs).
Companies turn to India to access the cloud talent pool, with a preference for establishing their own cloud Global Capability Centers (GCCs)
What’s ahead?
While technologies are evolving at a rapid pace providing access to greater functionalities, the experience with cloud platforms also points out the constraints in terms of costs, control and use of resources. It's no longer a matter of committing to a specific platform but instead embracing the realities of complex requirements that can only be addressed by hybrid multi-cloud solutions.
While this approach may introduce complexity, it is the only way to control costs and risks. To the rescue of many organisations comes the benefit of increased collaboration within a vibrant and growing ecosystem of technology and service providers.
