Are Hybrid Clouds the Best of Both Worlds?
That was the question posed today in the eBizQ Cloud Computing forum. My views on public v. private clouds have been pretty consistent: I don’t think that private clouds truly meet the NIST definitions, specifically around elasticity and from a CAPEX/OPEX point of view.
However, once you divorce the ‘religous’ aspect of what’s a “true cloud” from the conversation, you have to deal with the pragmatic realities. So my view on the question, probably isn’t really related to what’s the “best of both worlds”, but what’s more likely. And in my view the question comes down to the stage of the evolution of the company, not any technical reason:
If you are a 30 year old, even 10 year old company, where you have to support existing products/applications and already own a lot of infrastructure assets, then yes, hybrid cloud deployment strategies make sense.
However, if you’re a start-up you’re likely going to begin in the public cloud and stay there. Unless you become so large that the economics of “renting” don’t work anymore and then you can build your own mega data-center like Facebook did this year. But how many companies will approach that level of scale? Precious few.
I do still think that the decisions people make on public/private would change if the public vendors started offering cash for old infrastructure, but it’s been more than a year since I made the suggestion and no one’s taken me up on it yet.
F5’s Lori Macvittie (hope you’re reading her blog) also makes some good points. Read her and other responses and join the conversation.
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