One Door Closes – Another Opens: Dynamic Cloud Strategy

Author Lior Cohen got my attention in paragraph one talking about typewriters (going from manual to electric). Why? I’ve actually looked at getting an old IBM Selectric to better type on envelopes, etc. But the real jist of Cohen’s piece is how complicated constructing a secure cloud strategy is. Witness: “Historically, the transition from older technology to new technology is pretty straightforward. While a handful of folks using an Underwood manual typewriter may have been reluctant to give them up, the majority of users were eager to switch to an electric model. Today, people line up around the block to turn in their barely broken-in smartphone for the latest model.

Last year, IDG estimated that 96 percent of organizations had adopted the cloud in one form or another. So you would think that the move to the cloud would be all but over. The problem is that “the cloud” is not a very precise term. Because, when you dig into the details, the landscape is a little more fluid than those number might make it seem.

The Transition to the Cloud is Still in Flux

One complicating factor is multi-cloud. According to Rightscale, organizations today are using an average of 3 private clouds and 2.7 public clouds. They run applications in about 3 of them and are testing about 1.7 more.

However, according to a recent IHS Markit survey, 74% of organizations that had moved an application into the public cloud have subsequently decided to move it back into their on-premises or private cloud infrastructure.

Of course, this doesn’t mean they reversed all of their cloud deployments. But it is a trend that not many folks are talking about. It turns out that the cloud story is far from over. Nearly half of respondents, for example, noted that they had moved cloud deployments back into their infrastructure as…”