Local IT deployment is increasingly turning into a private cloud environment. The strategy must start from there.

The public cloud is becoming extremely popular. In fact, in both large and small companies, the use of the public cloud is virtually ubiquitous, thanks to its pay-as-you-go pricing, elasticity and the self-management simplicity it offers for IT resources. We might assume that all data and workloads are migrating to the public cloud, if not today, then in the near future.

But this is not the case! According to recent research by Forrester, about 60 per cent of applications still reside in corporate data centres. While the public cloud continues to attract interest, what is often overlooked is that spending on on-premise infrastructure is on the rise and still accounts for the majority of IT spending.

But if the cloud is so popular, why is this scenario occurring?

This is not just a temporary phase. Put simply, some data and projects are too sensitive or regulated to be moved to the cloud. Moreover, if the applications that require such data reside on-premises, it may not be cost-effective to store the data remotely and pay the costs to retrieve it.
In these situations, IT teams are increasingly looking for ways to replicate the benefits of the public cloud within their own data centres, thus creating private clouds. Therefore, the first step in a multi-cloud strategy could be a proprietary private cloud.
There are several options to replicate the simplicity of a public cloud in building and managing a private cloud. AWS and Microsoft, for instance, provide infrastructure that can be deployed in private data centres. In this case, they take care of the infrastructure management, while the user benefits.
However, this approach does not completely solve the problems of multi-cloud management, as you end up with two (or more) cloud silos within your data centre.

The “cloud neutral” solution

Recently, however, a new solution has emerged that we can call “cloud neutral“, which replicates the simplicity, elasticity and self-service functionalities of the public cloud, combining optimised hardware and software in a way that is much easier to use and manage.
Due to its nature, it is possible to create a complete cloud experience for all developers, regardless of where workloads run. Through the creation of a customised marketplace of templates and images, it is possible to control the developer environment so that some applications and workloads remain ‘on-premise’, while others can be developed to provide portability between different public cloud providers.
With on-premise workloads, significant cost savings can be achieved by eliminating data transfer fees and simplifying the support and licensing contracts associated with previous ‘do-it-yourself’ approaches to the cloud.
This simplicity also solves the so-called ‘day two problem’, i.e. the challenges that arise in the operational management of a private cloud based on software and hardware from different vendors, reducing the need to have a large number of highly specialised engineers dedicated to operations and allowing them to focus on strategic business projects.
Addressing this multi-cloud strategy simplifies and optimises the on-premise private cloud approach, offering numerous advantages.
A modern, simplified and optimised approach to the on-premise private cloud provides numerous benefits from a multi-cloud strategy.
And E4 Computer Engineering can configure the best on-premise solution according to the market and the characteristics of the company’s data.