As the industry experiences rapid change, you find your business needing an adaptable technology infrastructure to stay competitive, but security remains paramount. Migrating core systems to the public cloud brings scalability yet exposes sensitive data. The solution lies in a hybrid model, blending private and public environments. This strategic approach brings the best of both worlds, future-proofing operations with the agility of cloud computing while retaining control over critical assets. Leaders across Asia embraced hybrid cloud migration, transforming IT to align with innovation goals. The time is now for more businesses to take the leap.

The Rise of Hybrid Cloud in Asia

Demand for Flexibility and Scalability

• Businesses in Asia are rapidly digitalizing their operations and adopting new technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain, and big data analytics. To support these digital initiatives, companies require IT infrastructures that are flexible, scalable, and cost-efficient. Public clouds provide scalability but lack security and control. Private clouds offer security and control but limited scalability. Hybrid clouds bridge this gap by combining private and public clouds.

The Best of Both Worlds

• A hybrid cloud environment integrates a company’s private cloud with one or more public cloud services, allowing businesses to run workloads in the optimal environment. Sensitive data and applications can run on the private cloud, while less critical workloads run on the scalable public cloud. This provides the security and control of a private cloud along with the scalability and cost benefits of a public cloud.

Widespread Adoption Across Asia

• Industries across Asia are migrating to hybrid clouds. For example, in Singapore, the government has adopted a hybrid cloud strategy to support digital services. In Hong Kong, hybrid clouds power e-commerce platforms and financial services. In India, hybrid clouds enable scalability for the booming technology sector. In China, hybrid cloud adoption in manufacturing, retail, and transportation is accelerating digital transformation.

The hybrid cloud model is ideal for companies in Asia looking to innovate and optimize their IT infrastructure. By combining private and public clouds, businesses gain the benefits of both environments – security, control, scalability, and cost efficiency. This powerful combination is driving widespread hybrid cloud adoption across industries in Asia.

Drivers Behind the Shift to Hybrid Cloud

Demand for Flexibility and Scalability

• The rapid digital transformation of businesses in Asia has driven the need for flexible and scalable IT solutions. Hybrid cloud environments provide the agility and elasticity to support changing demands, allowing companies to scale computing resources up or down as needed. This flexibility is crucial for businesses looking to innovate quickly and stay competitive.

Data Sovereignty and Security Concerns

• For many Asian companies, data sovereignty and security are top priorities. Hybrid clouds allow businesses to keep sensitive data and workloads on private clouds while leveraging public clouds for less critical operations. This balanced approach helps address data privacy and security concerns which are particularly significant in some Asian countries and industries like finance or healthcare.

Cost Optimisation

• The hybrid model also provides cost benefits. Companies can use public cloud services for basic needs like storage or computing but keep mission-critical workloads in private clouds. This optimizes spending by using the most cost-effective option for each use case. Businesses only pay for the resources they need in public clouds, reducing waste and lowering the total cost of ownership.

Skills and Expertise

• Finally, the shift to a hybrid cloud in Asia is enabled by a growing pool of skills and expertise. Cloud technologies have matured, and more IT professionals now have experience designing, deploying, and managing hybrid cloud environments. At the same time, cloud service providers offer tools, solutions, and support to help businesses navigate the transition. With the right skills and partnerships in place, a hybrid cloud is a viable and appealing option for companies across Asia looking to drive digital innovation.

Hybrid Cloud Use Cases Across Industries

Financial Services

• Financial firms are increasingly adopting hybrid cloud solutions to modernize legacy infrastructure and gain agility. For example, banks can deploy customer-facing applications on public clouds to handle variable workloads, while keeping sensitive data in private clouds. This balanced approach helps them comply with regulations, cut costs, and roll out new digital services faster.

Healthcare

• Healthcare organizations are shifting to hybrid clouds to improve patient experiences and support value-based care models. They can store electronic health records and personally identifiable information in private clouds while running telehealth, patient portals, and health apps on public clouds. The hybrid model gives them the security and control they need while enabling innovation.

Manufacturing

• Manufacturers are turning to hybrid cloud environments to optimize operations and supply chain management. They are leveraging public clouds for tasks like data analysis, simulation, and prototyping, which require massive computing power. At the same time, they keep product designs, manufacturing processes, and other intellectual property in private clouds. This hybrid setup provides the flexibility and scale to build smart factories and enable industrial IoT.

Retail

• Retailers worldwide are adopting hybrid cloud strategies to gain a single view of customers and optimize the shopping experience across channels. They deploy e-commerce platforms, recommendation engines, and loyalty programs on public clouds to handle seasonal spikes in traffic, while maintaining customer data subject to regulations in private clouds. The hybrid cloud gives retailers the agility to launch new digital offerings faster and the control to ensure data privacy.

In summary, leading businesses in Asia’s key industries are transitioning to hybrid cloud environments. By combining private and public cloud solutions, they are gaining the digital capabilities to innovate and the governance to mitigate risks. For many organizations, the hybrid cloud has become the ideal platform for transformation in today’s digital era.

Best Practises for Transitioning to Hybrid Cloud Environments

Carefully Evaluate Your Infrastructure Requirements

• To determine the optimal hybrid cloud architecture for your organization, conduct a thorough review of your existing infrastructure and applications. Assess factors such as security, compliance, and performance requirements to identify which components are best suited for public or private cloud hosting. For highly sensitive data and workloads, a private cloud may be preferable. Legacy systems may need to remain on-premises. Map your infrastructure needs to available hybrid cloud solutions to find the right balance of public and private resources.

Select a Flexible Hybrid Cloud Solution

• Look for a hybrid cloud solution that provides a seamless experience across private and public cloud environments. It should offer a single interface to deploy, monitor, and manage all of your resources. Leading options include solutions from major public cloud providers like Microsoft Azure Stack, AWS Outposts, and Google Anthos. These provide API consistency, unified management, and container portability across on-premises infrastructure and the public cloud.

Migrate and Optimise Gradually

• Once you have selected a hybrid cloud solution, take an iterative approach to migration and optimization. Move a single application or workload at a time, starting with those best suited for the public cloud. Evaluate costs, performance, and manageability to determine any needed optimizations before proceeding to the next migration. Over time, you can rearchitect applications to be fully “cloud-native,” using microservices, containers, and serverless computing for maximum efficiency.

Continuously Monitor and Improve

• Closely monitor security, costs, performance, and other factors across your hybrid cloud environment. Make ongoing improvements to optimize workloads, reduce costs, and ensure consistent security and compliance. Update security policies as needed and use tools like CloudHealth and RightScale to gain full visibility into your infrastructure. Regularly review new public and private cloud services that could further enhance your hybrid architecture.

Transitioning to a hybrid cloud is a journey, not a destination. By starting slow, evaluating options carefully, and continuously optimizing, organizations in Asia and worldwide can reap the benefits of a hybrid cloud while avoiding potential pitfalls. With the right strategy and solution in place, a hybrid cloud can provide the foundation for innovation and digital transformation across the region.

Challenges and Considerations When Adopting Hybrid Cloud in Asia

Diverse regulatory environments

• As countries across Asia have distinct regulatory frameworks governing data usage and storage, businesses must ensure their hybrid cloud models comply with all relevant laws. Strict data sovereignty laws in some nations require certain types of data to be stored locally, while other countries have more flexible regulations. Organizations expanding into new Asian markets must understand how regulations in each country will impact their hybrid cloud strategy.

Legacy infrastructure challenges

• Many Asian companies have invested heavily in on-premises data centers and legacy systems over the years. Migrating these systems to a hybrid cloud environment requires careful planning to avoid disruptions. Businesses must determine which systems can be moved to public clouds, which are best-kept on-premises, and how to integrate the two for optimal functionality. This may require updating legacy systems and retraining staff to work with new cloud-based technologies.

Security and governance concerns

• While hybrid clouds offer enhanced security over public clouds alone, businesses in Asia must ensure sensitive data and workloads are protected. Strong access control, authentication, and encryption are essential, as is educating staff about security best practices in the cloud. Governance policies must also be updated to provide oversight and control over the hybrid cloud environment. Clearly defining responsibilities between in-house teams and cloud service providers can help avoid security gaps.

Cost management challenges

• The pay-as-you-go model of public clouds can lead to unexpected costs if not properly managed. Businesses in Asia must gain full visibility into how workloads are consuming resources in the public cloud and set budgets and alerts to avoid excessive spending. They must also determine how to distribute workloads in the most cost-efficient manner between private and public clouds. With close cost management, hybrid clouds can provide an affordable and scalable computing solution for companies across Asia.

In summary, while hybrid cloud adoption is accelerating in Asia, businesses must go in with their eyes open to the challenges involved. With strategic planning, investment in staff training, and close governance and cost management, organizations can overcome these obstacles and leverage hybrid clouds for competitive advantage.

Key Takeaways,

The hybrid cloud model offers Asian businesses the best of both worlds – retaining sensitive data and applications on private clouds while leveraging public cloud resources for scalability. With digital transformation accelerating across the region, hybrid cloud adoption is expected to rise steadily. To fully capitalize on hybrid environments, investing in skills, compatible systems, and comprehensive cloud strategies will be key. With careful planning and execution, Asia’s migration to hybrid holds much promise and potential.

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