John Stone of Interxion explores key areas IT service providers need to think about as the use of hybrid cloud continues to grow.

American computer scientist Alan Kay once wrote: “The only way to predict the future is to build it. “

Cloud computing is now part of our daily life. From the movies we watch to the services we use in our personal and professional lives, the demand for more cloud computing is likely to grow even more.

As we look to life beyond pandemics, businesses now find themselves in a very different reality. At the start of the pandemic, many companies adopted cloud computing as a survival measure to maintain connectivity with workers and customers.

As a result, we can have potential hidden issues like accidental hybrid IT and poorly planned cloud adoption in enterprises. Increasingly, businesses are looking to Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and IT Service Providers (ITSPs) to guide them through the complexity of this new world.

ITSPs and MSPs provide a multitude of services to businesses to help them sustain their activity. They are in the best position to provide the infrastructure and technology to handle future demands.

As businesses continue to transform and new systems and services emerge, the operating model faces new challenges. Companies have moved away from using a single central on-premises system: most now use a mix of cloud services, legacy systems, and third-party solutions working together to form a complex hybrid infrastructure. The challenge now shifts from the maintenance and adaptation of one system to the integration and communication of several.

This will put pressure on today’s service providers and systems integrators who will have to adapt to the new and ever-changing demands of their customers’ IT environments. Simply providing connectivity will not be enough. So what steps should IT service providers take into account? Here are five key areas to consider that will help create hybrid and multi-cloud cloud strategies.

Infrastructure certainties

Constant and rapid change is now a guarantee. Today’s service providers and system integrators will have to adapt to the new demands of their customers’ IT environments, including the increasing communication between different systems, platforms and users.

And with increasingly stringent data regulations, everything needs to be fast and secure. IT service providers will need to have full control over the location of data to meet the high security and performance expectations set by their customers and regulators.

Local handling and storage

More companies are now using cloud services and hybrid infrastructure to take advantage of more flexible and scalable solutions, but with these benefits new aspects of connectivity and security are emerging. This is particularly relevant for private organizations and public entities dealing with sensitive data.

For this type of client, data storage is often a crucial factor in choosing their IT infrastructure. They will require a comprehensive security strategy and the use of qualified partners at all stages of the cloud migration – for systems, applications and data.

Colocation and cloud

Cloud providers like Microsoft, AWS, Oracle, as well as Google, IBM and many more, offer good security with firewalls and real-time monitoring against intrusions and threats in the public cloud. But for entities with strict legal requirements for storing and processing local data, this is not enough.

Vendors have responded to this with locally hosted private cloud-based services, where applications are run and stored locally, in the country, with all data produced.

These neutral, on-premises data centers provide direct private connections to all major cloud providers, designed to ensure a fast and secure connection. This stops data transfer, unlike standard internet lines which cannot guarantee the same performance or security.

Hybrid environment management

Some organizations may not need local data management for all of their data and applications. Some areas of their operations can often be placed in the public cloud.

For organizations using a colocation data center, IT administration can often be managed using a dedicated interface, where the administrator can easily connect a private connection to one or more cloud providers and manage their networks. wide area (WAN) in one place. Hybrids can be optimized for load and needs without compromising on safety or performance.

User accessibility

By providing a more flexible environment, hybrid cloud solutions make it easier for organizations to scale, streamline, and implement new functionality. They can improve the management of their resources, providing better control, and now even organizations with strict data handling rules can benefit, using secure data processing from colocation centers and models.

To revisit Alan Kay’s sentiment, it’s clear that the hybrid cloud, and with it colocation and enhanced cloud data security, enables businesses not only to thrive today, but also to create a scalable environment for them. tomorrow.

By John Stone

John Stone is a senior consultant at Interxion. A version of this originally published on Interxion Blog.