By Paul Miller, HPE Vice President of Marketing, Software-defined and Cloud Group A hybrid IT strategy is fast becoming the new reality for many companies who want to find the Right Mix of cloud services for their business. If you’re not considering a hybrid approach to cloud, you are potentially adding significant risks to your day-to-day business. A few weeks ago, this risk was on full display when thousands of businesses were impacted by a 4-hour outage at AWS. Although Amazon successfully restored the outage, customers’ websites and services were down, resulting in customer satisfaction issues and revenue losses. A few days later, AWS reported that human error was to blame. A few servers were accidentally taken offline, and this one simple mistake started a domino effect that cascaded into a very large problem. Enterprises need to be careful about putting all their services into a singular entity like a public cloud. Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions, explained how this approach can backfire and what to do to avoid it. “Cloud sourcing is no different than any product or service sourcing. The old adages still apply: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and keep your options open. A private to multi-cloud continuum that can react in real time is and will remain the safest route to nonstop business continuity,” said Gardner. HPE is the only company helping organizations to define and implement a multi-cloud reality we call the Right Mix. With new technologies, such as HPE Synergy, combined with open source and open standards, implementing a private cloud becomes an effective option to deliver a public cloud experience in any datacenter. And this approach can often come with a lower total cost of ownership, as outlined in a 451 Group report. A private cloud model and traditional IT are a now a critical and proven option in the design and deployment of cloud applications that require enhanced security, availability, and performance. At HPE, we help our customers determine their Right Mix of traditional IT, private and public cloud. Security, compliance, performance, cost, and reliability are factors companies need to carefully consider when determining their IT architecture. Businesses that previously used public cloud are increasingly turning to deploying a mix of private and public cloud. A recent study by 451 Research showed that 69% of respondents have or are planning to have multiple cloud environments. Deciding where to best place workloads, how to architect a hybrid IT environment, and when to update operational processes for this new hybrid IT is complicated. According to a recent Forrester report, 80% of respondents are turning to third parties for assistance planning their hybrid IT. HPE has the expertise to help you determine your Right Mix of traditional IT, private and public cloud with analytics tools such as CloudGenera that provide businesses of all sizes select cloud solutions, establish governance around their cloud usage and drive adoption of their cloud strategy. HPE also provides a variety of payment methods like Flex capacity which has monthly advanced metering allowing you to just pay for what you have used. With more than 3,000 cloud customers, HPE has extensive experience architecting hybrid IT environments. HPE Synergy has the software-defined intelligence built in that you need to be able to run your own private or hybrid cloud. The flexibility and ease of management, with the option to add your own cloud software such as HPE Helion CloudSystem 10, gives you the power to bring your most business-critical applications back on premises. No complex billing structures, no unpredictability. HPE Synergy offers a complete solution, with options for all flash array storage like HPE 3PAR for mission critical workloads, a unified API to enable your Dev-Ops environment, a single pane of glass management software with HPE OneView to simplify your day-to-day operations, and the choice to run your own automation software like Chef, Docker, Puppet, and others. Take a closer look at everything HPE Synergy has to offer, not only for building a secure private cloud, but also for running your traditional business applications. With HPE, when the next public cloud outage inevitably hits, you won’t be left in the dark. Visit hpe.com/info/synergy to learn more. Technology Industry