Taking hybrid cloud to the SMB market

Nick East gives his view on the problem of scaleable, cost-effective hybrid cloud

Cloud computing remains high on the IT agenda within businesses of all sizes. While many are keen to make the most of the scalability and flexibility of cloud, the debate over security and just how much business information should be entrusted to public cloud is still holding some back.

This is why many enterprises are turning to hybrid cloud, which combines on-premises IT and public cloud to offer both unlimited flexibility and all-important security.

A report from industry analyst Gartner has suggested that by 2017 more than half of all cloud deployments in enterprises could be hybrid.

The main drivers of such an uptake would be agility and speed, and saving money would be less important.

While there are many vendors capitalising on this enterprise market opportunity, there is another opportunity not being fully explored, and that is hybrid cloud in the SMB market.

This would meet two primary requirements – lower TCO, and efficient, scaleable service delivery and management.

Simply shrinking an enterprise offering to fit is unlikely to result in an adequate solution. Technology must be specifically designed for the job.

SMBs are crying out for the reliability and security typical of on-premise IT, but the economics and flexibility of the cloud. Cloud reduces upfront costs, has per-user pricing and promises flexibility. I call this cloud economics.

Scaleability is crucial so customers never pay for more than they use. However, the problem with relying on cloud is that SMBs want to control their own data as well as have reliability and security. There are risks involved with storing everything in the cloud.

This is why in my opinion we are seeing so many enterprises using or planning to adopt hybrid cloud.

In the SMB market, demand for hybrid cloud is thus far largely unfulfilled. But resellers must deliver enterprise-grade IT to SMBs at the right price. Hybrid cloud can also offer per-user, per-month revenue streams of high value.

Standardising the configuration of hybrid cloud offerings across all customer sites is one way of making this economically viable for the reseller.

This has the added benefit of quality assurance.

Beyond that, hybrid cloud can also provide up-selling opportunities for professional services, public cloud services and applications.

Nick East is co-founder and chief executive of Zynstra