Five ways data platforms are underpinning the second cloud revolution
According to Gartner, over the next few years hybrid cloud will become the de facto approach for unlocking value from data. The projections are stark. Nine-in-ten organizations will adopt a hybrid cloud model by 2027, and end user spending globally on public cloud will grow by 21.4 percent this year alone, reaching more than $723 billion. Application services, system infrastructure services and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) will all see a boost in spending as well. By anyone’s money, these are huge numbers.
This second cloud revolution is being driven by data. When combined with analytics, data is a uniquely valuable asset for any business. If harnessed correctly, it can grow revenue, reduce costs, and entirely transform a business by opening up fresh market opportunities through the use of new technologies like GenAI.
Enabling hybrid cloud
It’s clear that many organizations are going all-in on hybrid cloud, spurred on by the belief that it will help them gain a competitive advantage.
But driving value from data across highly distributed hybrid cloud environments is easier said than done. This is why having a unified hybrid data platform is essential, as it combines the data management, analytics, transactional and data science services of both public and private clouds.
But why is a hybrid data platform so crucial to implementing the hybrid cloud model that will underpin innovation? Here are the top five reasons:
- To facilitate a highly distributed cloud model: An effective hybrid cloud platform uses a distributed cloud model that seamlessly spans private, multi-cloud, and edge environments. Functioning as a single, unified platform, this eliminates the need for separate solutions across on-premise and cloud data architectures. Data and workloads can move friction-free in between environments, without requiring expensive, time-consuming rewrites or refactors.
- To drive portable, interoperable data services: Introducing a new use case for data involves more than upgrading a data warehouse or enhancing a data science workbench. A hybrid data platform offers interoperable data services that span the entire data lifecycle -- from ingestion and transformation to warehousing, machine learning and AI, making these services seamlessly portable across clouds.
- To separate compute and storage: The key to cloud-native scale and agility lies in separating compute and storage, allowing each to be scaled independently and with flexibility. A hybrid data platform enables this isolation, empowering organizations to achieve a competitive edge via hybrid cloud.
- To provide governance always and everywhere: Compliance is often seen as a blocker to innovation. But effective data governance actually uncovers business value, and strong security ensures the right users can access data. These elements cannot be afterthoughts in any environment, and even less so across multiple. A hybrid data platform provides the consistent security and governance across all platforms that are essential for hybrid cloud success.
- To automate and optimise workload placement: Individual teams, departments or entire organizations have continually shifting priorities around aspects such as cost and performance for data and analytics. A hybrid data platform incorporates an intelligent decision framework that automatically places or moves workloads in response to changing circumstances. This ensures continuous, optimal delivery.
Futureproofing innovation
As disruptive technologies like AI continue to grow in popularity, and are underpinned by an ever-increasing number of data sources, organizations will come to rely on hybrid cloud even more. Nobody knows what the future holds beyond the AI age, or what will spark the next tech revolution. But one thing is clear. Successful deployment of a unified hybrid platform can pave the way for organizations to derive maximum value from their data. Those organizations that have laid these foundations will be at the forefront of innovation today, tomorrow and beyond.
Paul Mackay is RVP Cloud EMEA & APAC at Cloudera.