Cloud Computing Drives IT and Business Agility Hybrid Cloud Accelerates Time to Value

What is the main focus for IT in your organization – cost or agility? Many IT discussions today focus on cost controls rather than the greater potential benefit – business agility. IT leaders are more likely to ask “How much capital and operational expense can I cut with cloud?” than “How will cloud improve revenue or my company’s competitiveness?” Yet business decision makers want IT to help them drive innovation and accelerate past competitors. Forward-thinking CIOs are deploying cloud computing as a strategic weapon – not just for IT but ultimately to enable business transformation itself. For many enterprises, hybrid cloud is emerging as the most economical model. According to VMware and EMC research, hybrid cloud deployment would reduce typical total IT spend by approximately 20 to 30%. Hybrid clouds offer lower IT spend through virtualization and consolidation, optimized workload sourcing, optimized provisioning and higher productivity in application development and maintenance.

The key to hybrid cloud is the standardization of frameworks and infrastructure across public and private cloud, including:

• Common platform
• Common management
• Common security

Standardization is what makes applications and data portable and accessible across cloud. Given both the business and cost benefits, it is clear that hybrid clouds are the deployment model of the future.