Whitepapers

A hybrid approach to cloud computing

A hybrid approach to cloud computing is advanced in this paper. This potentially offers a best-of-both-worlds approach where certain data, applications and services remain on-premises whilst others are either moved to, enhanced by or transformed into cloud solutions.

"It is not easy to find organisations today that are not wholly reliant on their IT to function. With this reliance on IT there has, however, been a continual need to control enterprise IT costs. The bulk of IT costs now go towards supporting existing applications and services which mean organisations increasingly find it difficult to continue to innovate. "Cloud computing is emerging as a solution to some of these competing forces. It promises the vision of ubiquitous computing, available on-tap in a simple and cost effective manner. Cloud computing is quite a nebulous terms that encompasses a wide variety of software delivery models. Challenges exist with this utopian vision. These include, amongst others, security and existing investments an organisation has made in on-premises based IT solutions. Misconceptions also exist, where some vendors are intimating that cloud and browser are one and the same and that data has to be stored off-premises. These misconceptions are seriously inhibiting the successful uptake of cloud based solutions. "