Employee Experience, Employer

The Agile Advantage: Leveraging Hybrid Cloud for Scalability, Efficiency, and Innovation

Written by

ODG Team Contributor

Published on

6 Feb 2024

Cloud adoption has experienced exponential growth recently, transforming businesses across industries as they chase efficiency, innovation, and that ever-important competitive edge. Amidst this transformation, hybrid cloud emerges as a strategic response.

Recent research anticipates the hybrid market reaching $348.53 billion by 2028, with a remarkable 21.91 percent annual growth.¹ This surge reflects the strategic value that hybrid cloud delivers: adaptability, efficiency, cost control, heightened security, and expedited deployment. These are not mere trends but impactful solutions fueling business adoption.

Hybrid cloud blends public and private infrastructure seamlessly and offers a unique “best-of-both” approach. The driving force? Its ability to optimize performance, costs, security, and delivery speed.

So, how can businesses capitalize on this wave of hybrid cloud adoption? Let’s explore the key benefits and practical steps your organization can take to unlock the transformative power of a hybrid cloud.

Table of contents show

Unlocking Agility and Innovation

Hybrid cloud adoption introduces a transformative shift towards business agility and innovation, offering strategic benefits directly impacting your bottom line.

1. Cost Savings

Hybrid cloud solutions offer substantial cost savings, with potential benefits including:

Avoiding the cost of purchasing new hardware, saving up to 37 percent.
Reducing the need for physical servers, leading to savings of approximately 40 percent.
Leveraging cloud computing to save around 20 percent annually on infrastructure costs.

These savings are achieved through optimized resource utilization and streamlined infrastructure expenses. By blending on-premises and cloud-based resources, organizations can dynamically allocate workloads to the most cost-effective environments, minimizing unnecessary expenditure.

Netflix is a prime example of a company that successfully leveraged cloud computing to save on costs. By relying on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Netflix has taken advantage of the pay-as-you-go model, which allows them to pay only for the resources they use. This has enabled Netflix to scale its global infrastructure quickly and cost-effectively without significant upfront investments in hardware.

2. Scalability

Scalability is a hallmark feature of hybrid cloud environments, allowing businesses to adjust resources in response to fluctuating demand or changing growth objectives. This adaptability is crucial for organizations aiming to meet market needs without bloating overheads or response rates.

Airbnb adopted a hybrid cloud strategy to address scalability, security, and reliability challenges. The company utilized the Hybrid Cloud Decision Framework to evaluate the suitability of a hybrid cloud solution and develop a roadmap for its adoption.

It leveraged AWS’s global infrastructure to scale its operations seamlessly. By deploying resources across AWS regions, Airbnb ensures minimal latency and high performance for its users worldwide.

Furthermore, Airbnb’s commitment to cloud resources, particularly with AWS, is highlighted by its receipt of a cloud contract extension. This extension underscores Airbnb’s continued reliance on cloud technologies to support its operational capabilities, reliability, and scalability.

3. Faster Time-to-Market and Improved Agility

In today’s competitive landscape, business agility is no longer a “nice to have” – it’s a critical differentiator. Deloitte’s annual Business Agility Survey reveals that 67 percent of respondents see agility as a major priority, impacting their bottom line directly.² High complexity levels, often associated with on-premises IT, also lead to inflated costs.

This is where hybrid cloud steps in. By enabling flexible infrastructure and rapid resource provisioning, it empowers companies to innovate and launch products faster, just like Uber did. The global transportation leader transitioned from on-premises data centers to a multi-cloud strategy with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Google Cloud Platform.

It instantly empowered them to launch new features as cloud flexibility eliminated bottlenecks, significantly reducing time-to-market. Additionally, AI and machine learning capabilities helped them optimize routes, personalize experiences, and develop new features faster than ever, giving them a competitive edge.

4. Enhanced Innovation and Increased Reliability

Innovation is the lifeblood of modern businesses, driving growth, differentiation, and competitive advantage. Innovative businesses grow twice as fast in employment and sales compared to those that do not prioritize innovation. By embracing hybrid cloud solutions, organizations unlock the power of innovation, leveraging advanced technologies and data-driven insights to stay ahead of the curve.

Hybrid cloud architectures enhance reliability by leveraging redundant infrastructure across on-premises and cloud environments, ensuring business continuity and minimizing downtime.

Charting Your Course to Hybrid Cloud Success: A Decision Framework

Navigating the intricacies of hybrid cloud can seem overwhelming, but the payoff is clear: accelerating your business, exceeding customer expectations, and staying ahead of the market curve. Here’s how to unlock the true potential of hybrid cloud through strategic decision-making.

1. Align Cloud with Business Goals

Don’t implement hybrid cloud just for technology’s sake. Instead of adopting a generic technology-centric approach, position hybrid cloud as a strategic investment designed to propel your organization’s unique growth, efficiency, and innovation objectives.

While the exact metrics might vary depending on the industry, the fundamental process remains consistent – directly correlating hybrid cloud capabilities with business goals, quantifying the anticipated outcomes, and meticulously monitoring performance over time.

The key is to define quantitative KPIs that align directly with your strategic goals and business context. These may include outcome-focused metrics such as:

Project delivery time
Production cycle time
Product defect rate
Inventory turnover ratio
Customer retention
Service delivery efficiency
Revenue growth

2. Scale Up, Scale Down, Stay Agile

Don’t compromise between agility and costs – instead, leverage hybrid cloud’s inherent flexibility to achieve both simultaneously.

Customize agility objectives based on your industry-specific needs and growth initiatives. These could span dimensions like accelerated new capability development, improved business process efficiency, or enhanced customer experience.

Be sure to define quantifiable key performance indicators tailored to your strategic goals: innovation velocity, customer retention, or resource utilization. Rigorously track these KPIs over time to connect hybrid cloud capabilities to tangible business outcomes.

3. Optimize Your Spend, Maximize Your Value

In hybrid cloud adoption, financial sustainability goes hand-in-hand with generating business value – don’t leave ROI on the table.

Right Size Resources

Ensure your organization uses cloud resources efficiently by regularly assessing and optimizing its size and capacity to match workload demands. Avoid unnecessary expenses by scaling resources up or down based on actual usage patterns, thereby preventing over-provisioning and wasted spending.

Implement Budget Controls and Alerting Mechanisms

Set clear budget thresholds and implement automated alerting mechanisms to notify stakeholders when spending approaches or exceeds predefined limits. Then, proactively monitor cloud spending and intervene promptly to prevent budget overruns, ensuring financial sustainability and accountability across the organization.

Budget controls and alerting mechanisms enable organizations to maintain cost discipline and allocate resources effectively, maximizing the value derived from hybrid cloud investments.

STRENGTHEN BUSINESS SUCCESS THROUGH INNOVATION

Drive your business toward success with the guidance of On-Demand Group’s consulting services. Whether you seek personalized consulting or project-based advice, we can help you achieve your business objectives. Contact us today to start!

References

1 Mordor Intelligence. “Hybrid Cloud Market – Share, Size, Growth & Forecast.” Mordor Intelligence, 2 Feb. 2024, www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/hybrid-cloud-market.

2 Deloitte. “Business Agility Survey 2021: A Pulse Check of Business Agility in the Nordics.” September 2021. Deloitte Nordic. https://nor.deloitte.com/rs/712-CNF-326/images/Business-Agility-Survey-Nordic.pdf.