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Public, private, or hybrid? What are your cloud choices?

On the topic of cloud models – especially the different flavors of cloud – there is an ongoing discussion about what the best model could be: public and private.

On the topic of cloud models – especially the different flavors of cloud – there is an ongoing discussion about what the best model could be: public and private. Our experience when co-innovating with customers and partners on the topic cis clear, both models need to be on your lost if you want to succeed.

There are many definitions and I think a little simplification is in order, at least for the purpose of this blog (this is where some of the cloud purists will jump up and down):

  • Private Cloud – hosted solutions, often managed by a partner/vendor
  • Public Cloud – multi tenant solutions, managed by the vendor

We know that the move for our customers to the cloud must be a thoughtful evolution. A good strategy centers on leveraging the right mix of cloud, hosted, and on-premise technology. Customers have very specific challenges they are looking to solve, and very specific investments they want to leverage. Their starting point on this journey will help define the mix that is right for them. At their pace, not at vendors. 

But now, lets focus on cloud.

Why a Private Cloud?

A key driver for private cloud environments is control — the need to tailor a solution exactly to how a business process is run – because you differentiate with this process. You may also have specific enterprise or industry needs that need to be accommodated.

When it comes to the private cloud offering, and yes you might want to call it hosted, you should consider a managed cloud environment — powered by in-memory technology — and adding the following service elements:

  • Assessment advisory — what fits best to my situation, or delivers the desired business outcome best?
  • Onboarding and migration — how can i get there fast?
  • Infrastructure hosting and cloud services — can I get one hand to shake?
  • Application management and custom services — can I adapt it to my needs?

Co-Innovating with various customers and partners already running mission critical solutions, has proven the robustness of the private cloud. With this companies can run the entire business suite on HANA for customers. While the customers focus on building new and differentiating business processes — defined and sponsored by their respective line of business leaders — they can in parallel achieve positive business transformation of the assets they have invested in and they want keep using. 

Is a Public Cloud better?

It is not about better, it is about selecting the right approach and the right mix of solutions to solve your problems. It has to be right for you, or to take advantage of opportunities. 

A public cloud service makes the most sense when you want to adapt or change. An entire enterprise or a dedicated business area — doesn’t matter — important that you can leverage best practice. And you want to leverage it fast – as you might need to deliver outcome in the next quarter.

You can have it all – go hybrid!

Your vendor needs to make it possible to combine a managed Private Cloud offering -which you need to run the differentiating processes, tailored to your exact need and with tight control by your IT staff, with a Public Cloud service — to change your business in areas like people, customer relations, supplier relations and money?

Both private and public cloud offerings should leverage the same platform. With this Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering, you can enable the eco-system and the IT departments of customers to do what in the cloud also needs to be done – manage the last mile, configure or extend to your needs.

Regardless of whether you want to configure solutions to your needs, adapt a workflow or enhance a solution – the platform will support this. In addition, integration and data integrity is handled by the platform, regardless of a cloud to cloud or cloud to on-premise scenario.

With such a hybrid environment you can accelerate existing projects by bringing innovation and responsiveness to the business – while you can work on new projects in parallel. This will allow you to truly transform your business and bring cloud benefits like minimized infrastructure costs, risk reduction and the freeing up of internal resources to focus on essentials.

Irrespective of the cloud flavor we are talking about, security is a topic — you will read more in my other blogs on this.

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