by Han Chon, Managing Director, SEATHK, Nutanix
Being well-prepared to manage uncertainty is a top priority for almost all organizations, especially in today’s rapidly changing world. Yet, many have realized that hosting all their data on public clouds is not adequate for supporting business continuity or helping them flourish. Those that have kept afloat during the pandemic have recognized that a hybrid multi-cloud strategy has helped them adapt their infrastructure to match their changing needs.
In fact, most organizations now see the inevitability — and the benefits — of running workloads simultaneously across public clouds, on-premises, and at the edge. This enhances an organization’s ability to improve data security, and flexibility, and reduce costs.
Enhancing Integrated Data Management
According to Nutanix’s fifth annual global Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) report, IT infrastructure is becoming increasingly diverse. The research showed that 60% of IT teams surveyed worldwide tap on more than one IT infrastructure. In Singapore, the percentage is even higher — 67% of IT teams reported that they adopt either a mix of private and public clouds, multiple public clouds, or an on-premises data centre along with a hosted data centre. This trend is projected to intensify in the future.
However, these new complex IT environments pose various challenges for IT professionals. The copious amount of data generated from the rapidly increasing number of applications is one such challenge in data management and control.
With mixed infrastructure, organizations are losing visibility of their data stored across multiple cloud platforms or applications. The research showed that more than one in three (39%) organizations in Singapore do not have complete visibility into where their data resides. Worryingly, the lack of data visibility could potentially lead to data loss. This arises from significant risks such as vulnerability to security breaches, compromised ability to respond quickly to incidents, and difficulty in recovering information and complying with regulations.
As a result, organizations across Asia-Pacific are increasingly demanding a scalable cloud operating platform that can build, operate, govern, and run all their applications effectively. Having full data visibility helps organizations with better decision-making and optimizes operations for improved results. This eventually leads to increased efficiency, productivity, and ultimately, profitability.
Navigating the Cloud Landscape
Organizations that are getting ahead in the cloud race are taking the time to assess and understand the needs of customers, before developing a ‘personalized’ hybrid cloud strategy that addresses those pain points. Instead of solely adopting a public cloud strategy, they are looking at the bigger picture and seeing the cloud as an operating model and not a destination. A ‘personalized’ hybrid cloud environment can help organizations minimize operational costs, enhance flexibility, and control data and applications.
Olam International is a good example. The leading food and agricultural business headquartered in Singapore is achieving 99.999% availability for almost 95% of its IT stack running business-critical applications on hybrid multi-clouds. In addition, it has also seen an 85% drop in the number of reported IT incidents, thanks to the hybrid multi-cloud’s reliability.
Another successful customer is Maeil Dairies, a renowned leader in the Korean dairy processing industry. Since switching over to a hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure, there has been an improvement in the speed for completing mission-critical tasks such as the migration of data from the R&D Centre, and integrated control for dispersed virtual machines. Maeil reported that the response time for accessing R&D documents has been reduced by 50% since migrating over to the hybrid multi-cloud environment. In addition, the security of R&D data has improved significantly – by only allowing access through an app hosted on the VDI infrastructure, this safeguards the confidentiality of the organization’s research data.
By adopting a ‘personalized’ cloud solution, IT leaders can ensure compliance with a wide range of regional and industry standards while keeping cloud costs under control. Ultimately, organizations have always wanted to put their workloads where they are most intuitively accessible and scalable. At last, they are finding ways to do it.
