Hybrid Cloud Changes Software Models
- By Lachlan Colquhoun
- March 09, 2021
Software providers are changing their sales models and delivering their offerings inside specific cloud providers as enterprises continue to move to hybrid multicloud environments.
This is one of the insights from a conversation with Eric Hui, the director of cloud, IT and enterprise at Equinix, speaking in advance of the NextGen Connectivity Forum to be held on March 24.
Hui gave his observations on how the COVID-19 pandemic had changed the IT architecture environment, in the context of a market that already had significant momentum for hybrid cloud adoption and edge computing.
“You can see a lot more enterprises looking into multi-cloud for redundancy, and you can also see that there are new technologies moving out there like Docker, which are compatible with different cloud providers,” said Hui.
“At the same time, we are seeing a number of software providers coming to appreciate that they might have to move away from their traditional licensing basis and traditional sell models, and start putting their offerings inside cloud providers. People are saying that they need to put their eggs into different baskets, and that is what will foster the use of a lot more multicloud platforms.”
Hui gave the example of the streaming service Netflix, which uses different clouds for different business functions.
“The streaming of content is in one cloud, the billing is in another, and so is the catalogue,” said Hui.
“I think this is done on purpose, because of the strengths of the different cloud providers. And also to be able to separate the systems in case they have to nail down any problems and they can address it quickly with the provider and its actually good for their management.”
Simon Lockington, the senior director of Global Solutions Architecture, was also on the call and said he is observing organizations seeking to “consolidate” their cloud architecture, which in some cases had grown up without an overarching plan.
“Companies have departments which have just gone off and created their own multi-cloud environments,” said Lockington.
“So IT organizations are trying to consolidate that. So instead of having the wild west of people just going and spinning up their own environments, they retain some control, while still having the flexibility to be able to operate effectively.
“Each of the clouds has a special characteristic, for analytics or for database, so you don’t just want to lock into one cloud.”
In this environment, it was critical that the communication between the clouds is as efficient as possible.
“That is where things like network edge, which can route between clouds as close to the clouds as possible, offers a lower level of latency and the data is more secure because it doesn’t have to travel over large distances,” said Lockington.
“You might also have the front end of one application with one cloud, that is talking to a database, and you want to make sure that the communication between those clouds is as efficient and secure as possible, and need not come back to your point of presence.”
Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and HR&DigitalTrends, and the editor of NextGen Connectivity. His fascination is with how businesses are reinventing themselves through digital technology and collaborate with others to become completely new organizations. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image Credit: iStockphoto/vaeenma
Lachlan Colquhoun
Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and the NextGenConnectivity editor. He remains fascinated with how businesses reinvent themselves through digital technology to solve existing issues and change their business models.