To successfully accommodate growing workloads and systems requirements, businesses need to consider the advantages of bringing their legacy applications and processes to the cloud. Writing for CIO, Thor Olavsrud recently dissected the role that a CIO plays in working with a "hybrid" solution that bridges the gap between the cloud and older infrastructure. According to him, this is an increasingly popular method, although organizations may need to change their standard protocols for optimum efficiency.
Olavsrud quotes multiple sources who say that managers need to focus on "visibility" in order to successfully run operations, which includes working with external systems and creating a spread-out user experience. Although separating information throughout the cloud is possible, making the transition to this sort of process is difficult without a plan and the right tools to help.
One of the people Olavsrud quotes on the subject is Kim Stevenson, the CIO of Intel, who said that the right attitude needs to be taken for each specific function that organizations look to coordinate in the cloud.
"The premise that most CIOs are operating under, and which I personally believe is true, is you're going to have to think about your company in terms of separating your workloads," she said. "All of what we call core enterprise workloads — ERP, CRM, supply chain, messaging, service management, HR — those are the workloads that are going to the cloud."
Nonetheless, it's worth it to take the time to modernize. One company that has turned to a hybrid cloud system is Amazon, which is letting customers decide how they implement its Web Services via Direct Connect.
With the right approach to legacy system modernization, hybrid clouds can bring varied forms of improvement to your company's processes.