Embracing a hybrid cloud model to drive digital business transformation is now the path a number of businesses are considering to survive and gain competitive advantage in the digital economy. And this is rightly so, according to Herns Hermida, cloud and enterprise business lead of Microsoft Philippines.
“Organizations should leverage on new technologies, such as hybrid cloud, to come up with more innovative processes, products and services that attract new customers and retain existing ones,” Hermida said.
A Microsoft study among Asia-Pacific organizations found that while 35% of respondents already have an integrated hybrid cloud solution, 74% of enterprises believe that hybrid cloud will enable business growth, so that a bigger 82% of organizations surveyed now have a hybrid cloud strategy.
In the Philippines, Hermida said, 46% of IT leaders will embrace hybrid cloud in the near future, with eight out of 10 prioritizing an integrated hybrid cloud. On the other hand, 37% will embrace private cloud and only one percent for public cloud.
“Hybrid cloud is a natural progression for all enterprises in the Philippines, regardless of size and budgets, to digitally innovate their processes to make their businesses highly competitive,” said Hermida. “The cloud holds rich new applications which will enable better management tools, intelligent applications and advanced analytics to not just reduce cost and increase efficiency but to also innovate and enable faster time to market. As such, it can’t be ignored but needs to be managed.”
Hermida added that cloud technology is supporting the next wave of business innovation. A properly deployed cloud platform can improve efficiency with less cost; create new business models; and transform business. Fifty five percent of CIOs in Microsoft’s study indicated that they would source all their critical applications in the cloud by 2020.
To embark on the digital journey, Hermida noted that businesses need to get up with modern tools to manage increasing security and complexity. They should also gain control of their infrastructure with software management tools spanning across public, private, and multiple branded clouds. Apart from these, they should move quickly to an integrated hybrid cloud that allows them to benefit from the best of both worlds; and they need to drive more sophisticated workloads in the cloud to innovate, shorten time to market and maximize the potential which new digital technologies have to offer.
“Organizations must be ready for change in embracing the hybrid cloud innovation,” Hermida stressed.
For Microsoft, cloud solutions include Windows Server 2016 which includes Office 365 productivity apps, Dynamics 365 business apps, Azure for application innovation, and Cortana for data and intelligence as well as security management.
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