hybrid cloud
UNLOCKING THE BENEFITS OF HYBRID CLOUD
Dr Malcolm Murphy , technology director , Western Europe , Infoblox , highlights the importance of intelligent network automation in controlling , securing and analysing next generation data centre and cloud environments .
According to Forrester , more than half of businesses intend to adopt a hybrid cloud model over the next 12 months . And when you consider the lower infrastructure cost , greater agility , and improved security when compared to public clouds or traditional client-server architecture , it ’ s not hard to understand this increased interest in hybrid clouds and virtualised , automated data centres .
Transitioning from a public or private cloud to a hybrid model will require organisations to operate in a multi-cloud , multi-platform environment , often including traditional on-premises components alongside Microsoft Azure , Amazon
Web Services ( AWS ), and other OpenStack cloud technologies .
But , while automated processes for spinning up storage and compute can offer tremendous speed , business agility and cost savings , configuring aspects of an organisation ’ s network such as its DNS ( domain name server ) across hybrid environments can often be complex , and still tends to be managed manually .
Indeed , the agility that this new cloud environment promises can be negatively affected by manual processes around the management of DNS , DHCP and IP , collectively known as DDI . Processes such as these can also cause inconsistencies across hybrid deployments , as well as increasing vulnerabilities that can result in outages , security breaches and an overall poor user experience .
By way of illustration , consider legacy DNS infrastructure . One of the most exploited parts of a network , it can often be a hidden crack in that network ’ s foundation , with the potential to derail a business , particularly if that business is using an initiative such as public and hybrid cloud .
If they hope to avoid impacting the security of their network , it ’ s important , therefore , for businesses to consider investing in a unified platform to centralise the management of the core services at its foundation .
40 | April 2017