By 2027, half of key business applications will be situated outside centralised public cloud areas, according to Gartner. The evolution of cloud computing markets and data centre infrastructure, combined with the rising interest in workload migration, has many businesses grappling to pinpoint suitable partners and solutions
“Enterprises are beginning to seek placement for workloads that have not migrated to the public cloud,” says Dennis Smith, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. “This represents approximately 70% of all workloads, but the growing number of vendors, technologies and overlapping markets makes it difficult to identify the optimal infrastructure choice for an organisation’s unique circumstances and needs.
Enterprises have an abundance of choice when it comes to infrastructure services which currently reside ‘on-premise’. These range from vendors’ server virtualisation products to a comprehensive set of services from public cloud providers.
Gartner suggests that infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders adopt a three-step approach to determine suitable placement strategies.
Assess Infrastructure Needs
Businesses are exploring cloud-inspired solutions for their current on-site workloads, like vital business applications and generic workloads. These settings might be virtualised but often lack extensive automation and self-service options due to their bespoke nature.
Companies aiming to mould their on-site environments to be cloud-inspired must ensure that deployments meet public cloud necessities. A myriad of cloud-inspired and cloud computing solutions also present hybrid features, allowing for the deployment of standard infrastructure components and application programming interfaces (APIs) both on-site and in the public cloud.
Embrace Hybrid Capabilities & CIPS
The continuous demand to back workloads located outside of public cloud regions signifies the need for a blend of cloud and non-cloud infrastructure for the foreseeable future.
“Companies need hybrid capabilities and always will,” said Smith. “While public clouds deliver many benefits, such as innovation, agility and scalability, their utility can be limited when deployed outside the locations chosen by public cloud providers.”
The market for cloud infrastructure and platform services (CIPS) is undergoing significant shifts, with long-term implications for the future of enterprise IT and is currently morphing into four distinct markets:
- Distributed hybrid infrastructure (DHI): Addresses the limitations of a traditional on-premises infrastructure for cloud operating model benefits, providing greater consistency and availability.
- Strategic cloud platform services (SCPS): Covers the full breadth of cloud services and includes modernising legacy applications for enterprises.
- Container management: Covers a range of container management offerings including Kubernetes platforms, cluster fleet management and serverless offerings.
- DevOps platforms: Includes solutions intended to aid continuous integration/continuous delivery.
All of these markets reside outside server virtualisation, infrastructure consumption services (ICS) and markets related to data centre infrastructure (DCI).
“Companies will need to navigate both the differences and overlaps across CIPS markets to choose the appropriate workload placement,” said Smith. “This includes identifying the different personas, clarifying their requirements, across both the cloud-native infrastructure and application developer affinity vectors, and mapping them to the appropriate market.”
Opt for Suitable Partners and Solutions
I&O leaders must decide their preference between vendors with either an inside-out or outside-in approach. The former involves traditional data centre vendors offering cloud services, while the latter encompasses cloud providers offering on-premise. Moreover, leaders must decide between a cloud-only, cloud-first strategy, or a more measured cloud adoption
“I&O leaders can select the correct infrastructure solution by performing a thorough analysis of use cases and identifying the core characteristics and capabilities needed,” said Smith. “This will help determine the appropriate technologies and vendors that align with requirements.”
Gartner clients can read more in “Navigate Cloud Computing and Data Center Infrastructure Markets.” Gartner analysts will also be providing additional analysis on cloud strategies and infrastructure and operations trends at the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conferences taking place 20-21 November in London.
