With more than 93% of enterprises around the world using hybrid clouds according to Research in Action (RIA), the technology is well and truly part of the business landscape.

But the company also points out that “there are still more than 40% of companies that do not have hybrid cloud management solutions in productive use”. The ability to combine the flexibility of public cloud resources with the security of on-premises infrastructure has revolutionised the way many companies are run, and hybrid cloud management is the way to make sure the technology delivers on its promises.

Business development manager at Micro Focus South Africa Kevin Kemp says that the widespread use of private and public cloud technology makes one’s choice of partner critical to business success. “As a standard feature of the digitally transformed business, it’s important to get the basics right.”

Kemp points to data security as a prime example. “Whether the threats are opportunistic or whether they’re serious threat actors, companies of all sizes are subject to things like ransomware and social engineering,” says Kemp. “Successful operation of business-critical hybrid cloud platforms assumes that such threats are appropriately mitigated. Effective hybrid cloud management incorporates that kind of protection.

The hybrid configuration will remain necessary and relevant for as long as companies (or regulatory authorities) maintain data policies that forbid some kinds of data to be hosted off-premises. The hybrid cloud combines the best of both worlds, with the added security of proprietary data centres being combined with the scalable agility of public cloud facilities. The use of business-critical SaaS/PaaS (software/platform-as-a-service) applications is now common to many hybrid enterprise cloud networks, and their impact on operations and profitability is remarkable.

Orchestration

Just take Air France-KLM, for example. When the company was looking for ways to deliver IT services faster and more cost effectively in a turbulent and competitive market, it used hybrid cloud technology to improve efficiency at scale and introduce orchestration as code.

The result? A 400% improvement in productivity improvement through parallel workflow execution and reuse. The airline also achieved effective, continuous DevOps delivery with workflow creation in hours instead of days, combining flexibility and ease-of-use through full integration capabilities.

“Concurrent HCM workflows execute up to four times faster than the traditional single-flow sequential execution, so there are huge time gains. This gives us the scalability we wanted. In a full lifecycle management orchestration, we have reduced our time to market and improved the quality of our service.” — Trajce Golomeov, automation and cloud technical architect, Air France-KLM

The use of hybrid clouds in enterprises has exploded in recent years. According to RIA, 99% of all enterprises around the world will be using hybrid clouds within two years. Within the same timeframe, just 1% of companies globally won’t be using any hybrid cloud management solutions at all.

To help customers find the best available partners to manage their hybrid cloud infrastructures, RIA created a vendor selection matrix by surveying more than 1 500 enterprise IT and business decision makers for its 2022 Top Global Vendors report¹. First, the research uncovered the five most important features of an effective hybrid cloud management solution as:

Support for all leading public and private cloud platforms
Cost control and cost optimisation
Support for multi cloud provider workload shifting
Auto-discovery and service dependency mapping
End-to-end performance management\

Micro Focus market leadership

RIA tapped Micro Focus as the global leader on two counts: for hybrid cloud service management solutions and hybrid cloud infrastructure management solutions. Customers gave Micro Focus both the highest satisfaction and highest value for money scores.

“The broad portfolio, excellent integrations among its own solutions, and that of domain-specific solutions and data items make Micro Focus an excellent partner for all global enterprises’ journey of digital business transformations.” — RIA vendor selection matrix report

Micro Focus’s customer feedback was unambiguous, with the 1 500 enterprise managers interviewed giving the company the highest rating of all vendors. Its global salesforce and ecosystem of implementation partners and system integrators place Micro Focus in a strong position to maintain its market leadership.

Market-leading hybrid cloud management isn’t easy. Hybrid data centres create many potential management headaches, because while they provide flexibility, scalability and governance/data security benefits, hybrid infrastructures make network, servers, storage and software software management inherently more complex. “Your choice of partner is critical. Make it carefully,” concludes Kemp.

¹Sixty-three percent of the evaluation is based on buyer evaluations, while 37% is based on the analysts’ judgment after extensive interviews with vendors and their clients.