How to Future-Proof Your Hybrid Cloud Strategy

Aparna Sharma, managing partner for hybrid cloud services at IBM Consulting, on hybrid cloud trends and how to scale your cloud architecture

By Emma Pitzl

How to Future-Proof Your Hybrid Cloud Strategy

Aparna Sharma, managing partner for hybrid cloud services at IBM Consulting, on hybrid cloud trends and how to scale your cloud architecture

Interviewed by Emma Pitzl

Read the full transcript below.

Emma Pitzl (EP): 

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this TechChannel intervew. My name is Emma Pitzl—I am managing editor of TechChannel, and today I'm joined by Aparna Sharma, who is the managing partner for hybrid cloud services at IBM Consulting. Today we're going to be talking about a topic that Aparna is very passionate about, hybrid cloud, and I'm so excited to have her join me today. So welcome, Aparna.

Aparna Sharma (AS):

Thank you. And so good to be here, Emma.

  1. Identify
  2. Protect
  3. Detect
  4. Respond
  5. Recover
EP: 

Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do at IBM Consulting?

AS: 

Yeah, absolutely. Hello, everybody. IBM Consulting, we solve our clients', large enterprises, biggest technology problems, and in my group, we help clients with their application and architecture and cloud strategy, hybrid cloud strategy, helping them migrate, helping them modernize some of the most complex applications and then run those applications, as well. And we do this integrating the latest technologies, the latest expertise using GenAI, using automation, and really help our clients solve the hardest problems.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Explore the CIO Playbook

For enterprises that that have historically relied on core platforms like IBM Z® and IBM® i to power their business, how do they leverage their IT infrastructure to make the most of transformative technologies like AI, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things? Read “The CIO Playbook for Hybrid Cloud Success” to explore the myriad of challenges faced by CIO’s seeking to unlock the mainframe as an asset for innovation.

 Opens in a new window.
EP: 

Awesome. Thanks, Aparna. So, I really want to just start off with setting the scene. There's been this recent shift from on-premises to cloud, and I would love to hear your thoughts on what's really pushed that shift and what factors are fueling that shift.

AS: 

Oh, yeah. This has been a decade—at least decade worth—of change that enterprises are going through, and this is just very, very powerful. So, I think really your question is why cloud and why large enterprises have embraced cloud so much? And there's several reasons. So, first of all, just the scalability. So, a lot of large enterprises need to be able to scale up or down as needed, and the cloud provides that they need the flexibility, which is really valuable for companies with either fluctuating volumes or workloads or they're experiencing rapid growth, or they have seasonal needs. So that scalability and flexibility is just so huge. Some organizations have been able to drive a lot of cost savings because businesses can really size there computing resources as compared to they’re running a fixed spending on their side. There's been increased agility. You can deploy new applications and services faster with very reduced complexity.

 

And so that really increases the speed to market. The agility is just so key, so critical in today's fast-paced environment where to time to market can be a huge key competitive differentiator. There are others that use security that cloud offers to be able to protect data, to be able to protect applications, important for handling business-sensitive information. So there are many, many reasons, and those are some of the basic reasons if you would, but customers now are using all of this innovation that is available on cloud to be able to accelerate their revenue stream, to be able to grow their customer base, to be able to compress their business cycles or to be able to improve their worker productivity. So there are all these other important business outcomes that they're able to drive.

EP: 

And so there's all these benefits to working with a hybrid cloud infrastructure. So as more and more businesses have shifted to that kind of architecture, what are some of the key lessons, both good and bad that you're hearing from customers that they've been learning?

AS: 

Yeah, no, I think that it's goodness all the way. Let me give you a few examples. So with some of our customers that we work with, for example, if you think about Delta, Delta wanted to bring in operational resilience and we were able to create architecture flexibility, consistent practices and talent pools. And when they had to have 600+ planes and provide free in-flight Wi-Fi powered by hybrid cloud, we were the partner behind that with them. There is the U.S. Open going on right now, and so when the world is looking at tennis, we are looking at the data and the same thing we've done at Wimbledon. So really leveraging hybrid cloud to be able to create AI powered fan experiences. You're talking about 130 million documents source across multiple clouds, 3 million live data points and driving insights from all of that to make it a better fan experience.

 

You're talking about a bank, right? A bank in Latin America. We work very closely with them to really able to enhance their, or strengthen their security posture by streamlined policy enforcement or faster threat detection and mitigation. And so we were able to really reduced their customer onboarding time, almost 99% reduction in their client verification time. So there's been just goodness all around with hybrid cloud and driving all of these outcomes, driving all of this value for all of these enterprises beyond just what the benefits of the basic cloud are. Now of course there have been some challenges as well. The biggest challenge that I've seen that our clients have faced is if they didn't have the right strategy, if they didn't have the right plan and they just moved to public cloud without really analyzing what do they want from the cloud and how does this fit in their overall architecture or which applications are more suitable for public cloud?

 

And that's where in the last five years there's been a lot of focus on hybrid cloud because now customers have complex landscapes and they have multiple clouds, they have multiple public clouds, but they still have a lot of their applications, they have private clouds. The question is how does this all come together? So when the biggest lesson has been have we done the strategy to figure out fit for purpose because no two applications are the same, no two workloads are the same. So what's fit for purpose? Which application is best suited for public cloud? Which application or workload is best suited for a private cloud or which application is best suited for on-prem? For example, there is a large bank that we work with, they move some of their core workloads to public cloud and they were used to their core workloads were running on mainframe. And with mainframe there is a lot of strength from a core transaction capability standpoint, throughput resilience, security, availability. Now for those type of workloads, they started facing challenges with public cloud because the same resilience, the same availability is just not possible with public cloud today. And so being very deliberate about the strategy, being very deliberate about what goes where, and being very deliberate about fit-for-purpose, leveraging hybrid cloud to bring it all together has been the biggest lesson

EP: 

Yeah, so keeping all of that in mind, you're saying you need to have a strategy laid out. How can people—what kind of emerging trends or technologies should people be aware of or looking out for as they're planning their hybrid cloud architecture?

AS: 

Yeah, I think the first thing, as I said, have a strategy, have a plan. So instead of rushing into cloud migration without having a clear plan, that people can face a lot of difficulties and setbacks with that. So that's the first thing. The second one is hybrid cloud is the new normal now, so do you have your hybrid cloud architecture defined? So you are able to take advantage of all the innovation on public cloud, you're able to take advantage of all the investments that you've made in your current infrastructure and you're able to marry the two. So really be able to make use of it. The other piece is the talent piece. So cloud adoption requires significant cultural organizational changes including talent and skill requirements. So are you focused on enabling your workforce and are you building out that expertise? The fourth one is just financial.

 

So, the cloud is adopted across multiple parts of the organization. And if you don't do that in a cohesive fashion, we are seeing several organizations where the cloud bills have really been going up. And so we are using FinOps, as we call it, to be able to measure what are they spending on and how are they optimizing that and how do they as an enterprise use a cohesive plan to drive that optimization. The biggest trend that I'm seeing right now, and we have so many customers looking at this, is in the last one year there's been just so much focus on GenAI, and as clients are looking to scale their GenAI, there needs to be increased focus on hybrid cloud. So let me give you an example. So right now a lot of enterprises are doing pilots and GenAI pilots and they might have one GenAI application, they might have one large language model and they might have one cloud provider.

 

Now they want to take these pilot candidates, pilot use cases to production architectures. As they're taking these pilots to production architectures, they need to now operate multiple cloud providers, multiple large language models, image models, voice models, data models, they have multiple GenAI applications, and then there is data and application across different environments. So if an enterprise hasn't figured out what does their consistent developer platform look like, what does their data governance look like? There is no way for them to be able to scale these pilots to production and AI is here and organizations are really leveraging it to drive very different outcomes, to drive very different type of productivity, to drive very different type of differentiation, but to scale that they need to get their hybrid cloud right.

EP: 

Yeah. Do you have any more advice, I guess for thinking about, obviously GenAI is the big topic right now and just thinking about maybe the next five, 10 years as the landscape continues to evolve, how can organizations really ensure that they're building a future-proof, scalable architecture in the midst of all that is going on?

AS: 

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think the biggest thing that they can do is if they've not mature on this, if they've not started on this journey, they can start small. If they don't want to go enterprise wide, they can take a few applications, few workloads and then assess which workloads are best suited and how do these different fit for purpose applications fit into this hybrid cloud architecture and then scale it. I think that's the biggest thing that I'm seeing right now as to with all the innovation that is available on hybrid cloud with all the capabilities that are available on hybrid cloud, how do you scale this to be able to make use of all of that, especially GenAI?

EP: 

Yeah. So thinking more about the future, how do you really see the role of hybrid cloud in the IT landscape changing or evolving? Do you think it will still be the de-facto for the foreseeable future?

AS: 

Absolutely. I think more and more, right? So if it was so far while cloud was part of the organization, but if it was what we call hybrid by default, meaning it could be siloed or it could be using resources in certain parts of the or not having the best alignment between business and it, I think what is going to happen from now on is what we call hybrid by design, where you really able to have an integrated operating model, you're able to streamline priorities and you're able to accelerate value, you're able to continuously drive innovation in a very speedy fashion. And with all of that, you're able to drive generative AI at scale. And what we've seen in the last few years is the organizations that are doing hybrid by default versus organizations that are doing hybrid by design, they are able to drive 3x higher ROI from their digital transformation journeys. So I just am seeing more and more adoption of hybrid cloud and hybrid by design for clients continuing to drive those outcomes.

EP: 

So, it really sounds like you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, but cloud can work for anyone and you just have to find the right sort of configuration for your organization. Is that correct?

AS: 

Absolutely. I think there is a lot that hybrid cloud offers, and the question is: what's your strategy and how do you use that strategy to be able to drive the best outcomes for your business? Absolutely. Yeah.

EP: 

So, are there still people out there who maybe say, cloud isn't for me?

AS: 

Oh yeah. There are people, and for right reasons. I think the question is why, what is the reason? And of course, all problems can't be just solved by public cloud. That's why hybrid cloud, and that's why there's certain workloads that are suited. Our specialized workloads and organizations absolutely are making a right decision to have them as part of their on-prem infrastructure. Absolutely. The question is how do all of these pieces and parts come together? How do they integrate? So a bank, let's say, might be on a public cloud for the customer facing applications because all of us are used to good customer experiences, and so they want to give that cloud native experience to their customers, but for their core transaction processing, they are using mainframe because of its resilience, because of its security, because of its availability and so on. The question is how are we integrating both of these? Because you are getting customer requests at the front end, and now you're processing millions of transactions with your core systems. How are they integrated? So absolutely, I think clients could absolutely decide that public cloud is not for them, but what they need to figure out is how do their public cloud, private cloud, on-prem systems are talking to each other and are optimized to drive outcomes for them.

EP: 

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, do you have any closing thoughts that you would like to share about anything that we've talked about today?

AS: 

No, this is great. I think sometimes this can be a challenging, challenging journey. That's why we at IBM Consulting are here—to work with our clients to help them on the most complex problems, whether they're the architecture problems, or it’s being able to do the right strategy is to be able to do the fit-for-purpose analysis. It's to be able to do POCs to figure out can we prove out this particular technology or how do we containerize these applications? Or how do we modernize these applications? Or how do we use GenAI to increase the productivity? We can help our clients with all of that. And so really keen to partner and to help those challenges.

EP: 

How can people get in touch with your team?

AS: 

The best way to get in touch with our team is just go to ibm.com and then IBM Consulting, and there are resources for modernization. There are resources for GenAI, there are resources for strategy, anything that you might be interested in.

EP: 

Awesome. Well great. Thanks, Aparna. Thanks so much for your time and sharing your expertise with us today. It's been a pleasure.

AS: 

Good. If cloud has been the enabler so far, I think now GenAI can be the differentiator and so hybrid cloud and AI together can really drive enterprises forward. Thank you.

EP: 

Thank you.

Aparna Sharma
IBM Consulting
Aparna Sharma is the general manager and managing partner for hybrid cloud services in IBM Consulting. Her organization focuses on helping clients realize the full potential of their transformation initiatives and provides services including Cloud Advisory, Modernization, Architecture, Build and Manage.
Share this article
Share this article