Menu

02/22/16 Clint Boulton Knowledge

Hybrid clouds are hot, SDNs and DevOps coming on strong


Screen shot 2016 02 22 at 10.41.37 am

Some 80 percent of companies are building hybrid clouds

If you're a CIO the chances are good your computing environment looks something like this: A hybrid cloud comprising core business software hosted internally but interfacing with software-as-a-service applications that are important but not mission-critical. And you also have public cloud services where you test applications.

Eighty-one percent of 3,000 vice presidents of IT, network and infrastructure architects surveyed last summer by F5 Networks fit that profile, indicating that they plan on operating a hybrid cloud environment in the next two to five years, says Karl Triebes, CTO of the application services provider. He says some respondents are also considering migrating their networking systems to software-defined networks (SDNs), and embracing DevOps to gain greater operational efficiencies.

In a hybrid cloud, companies run core software such as ERP systems in a private cloud while outsourcing CRM, human resources, and collaboration applications. Forty-three percent of respondents cited the private cloud as having the most strategic importance, followed by SaaS and public clouds at 40 percent and 34 percent, respectively.

F5 joins the hybrid cloud trend.

F5 is gradually building out a hybrid cloud environment, says Triebes. He runs his Oracle ERP software in F5's data center but has in recent years migrated HR functions to Workday and expense management to Concur. F5 developers are also testing application services in AWS, though he acknowledges these apps don't require high performance and are shut down when the testing is completed. "We want to get the economies of scale and cost savings by being able to do things like automate infrastructure," Triebes says. "But it takes time and these things are still evolving rather quickly."

F5 represents today's IT ecosystem. Hybrid clouds are designed to allow CIOs to virtualize and automate critical software with little manual intervention, freeing up architects, administrators and other IT staff to focus on analytics or some other strategic projects.

But the path a CIO takes to build this environment is the big challenge. IT leaders must decide what to operate behind the firewall versus what to delegate to SaaS providers or offload to the public cloud. And unlike the mature market for on-premises software and client-server systems, the cloud includes several deployment combinations and vendor options. The CIO's toughest job isn’t typically implementation, but picking the correct vendors and service-level agreements. Poor decision-making can be disastrous and costly.

The F5 survey also asked about respondents' perception of SDNs and DevOps, two themes that, like the cloud, CIOs are increasingly viewing as table stakes for operating IT more efficiently. SDNs optimize data traffic from streaming video, sensors, cloud software and other information-intensive activities use using software controllers to direct network policies and resources typically managed by networking switches and routers. Putting more control in the hands of the software reduces companies' manual provisioning and tuning of routers and switches. "Companies want to get out of infrastructure management," Triebes says. "They see SDN as an opportunity to do that."

Some companies do anyway. F5 found that only 3 percent of respondents indicated they used an SDN in production today, while 39 percent did not plan to implement one at all. But 37 percent of respondents said SDNs will become strategically important in the next two to five years, with EMEA leading the way at 41 percent, followed by Asia-Pacific and the Americas at 38 percent and 29 percent, respectively.

Service providers, such as Verizon and AT&T, have been at the forefront of leveraging this emerging technology. But the vast majority of enterprises, including $28 billion Avnet, are only beginning to test such products in 2016, CIO Steve Phillips recently told CIO.com. Migrating to an SDN is no trivial task because you can't risk disrupting the existing network fabric on which the business operates. Moreover, many companies have already made significant investments in their networking infrastructure.

F5 also found that DevOps is emerging as an opportunity for companies to build software, using an automation, orchestration and programmable APIs, at a time when businesses are demanding crisper execution.

But it’s early days, Triebes says. Only 17 percent of respondents say that DevOps will have a strategic impact within the next two to five years, but not too early for companies to dip a toe in this pool. Sixty-seven percent of respondents say they are using one or two DevOps tools to configure, deploy and scale applications. Of the 43 percent of respondents who view private cloud as important, 23 percent also say DevOps is significant. The reason? Security, says Triebes.

F5 software programmers use DevOps to develop the company’s SaaS security app within the company’s hybrid cloud. “It’s pretty much a classic model for DevOps, but it’s entirely hosted on our own infrastructure,” Triebes says. But as the relatively low adoption rate for DevOps suggests, the method involves a lot of challenges that companies are still working out.

All Research Tags

$DFT $DRT 2021 Data Center acquisitions 2024 Data Centers 2103 data center acquisition report 350 E Cermak AI AI Data Center AI Data Center Boom AI Data Center Consulting AI Data Center Growth AI Data Center Site Selection AI Data Centers AI Growth AI M&A AI Real Estate AI nuclear power data centers AT&T AWS AWS Cloud AWS Columbus AWS Data Centers AWS data center Amazon Cloud Amazon data center Artificial Intelligence Data Centers Ashburn Data Center Market Atlanta Data Center Leasing Atlanta Data Center Market Azure BC Partners buying Centurylink data centers Barron's Data Center Real Estate Bitcoin Mining North Carolina Bitcoin Mining Power Rates Bitcoin Mining Washington Blockchain Business Continuity Buys Data Center Buys Data Center 2018 Buys Data Center 2019 Buys Data Center 2020 C7 Data Center CIO CIO Insight CIOForum CONE CONE REIT Sale CONE Sale COR CTO Carter Validus REIT Carter Validus sells data centers Centurylink Data Centers Centurylink buys Level 3 Centurylink data center business Centurylink selling data centers Chanos Cloud Cloud Computing Cloud Data Centers Cloud Spending Colocation Columbus Data Center Market CoreSite Coresite Covid-19 Cryptocurrency Mining Power Cryptocurrency mining space CyrusOne CyrusOne Acquisition CyrusOne Atlanta data center CyrusOne Bidder CyrusOne Data Center Atlanta Cyxtera Technologies DCRE DLR DLR buys DFT DRT Dallas Data Center Activity Dallas data center Data Center Data Center AI Data Center Absorption Data Center Absorption 2021 Data Center Acquisitions Data Center Acquisitions 2019 Data Center Acquisitions Report 2018 Data Center Activity 2018 Data Center Broker Data Center Brokerage Data Center Cloud Demand Data Center Consolidation Data Center Construction Columbus Data Center Consulting Data Center Covid Data Center Development Data Center Growth Data Center Investment Data Center Investments Data Center Investments 2020 Data Center Land Data Center Leasing Data Center M&A Data Center Market Data Center Market 2021 Data Center Market Research Data Center Mergers & Acquisitions Data Center Multiple Data Center News Data Center Power Data Center Purchase Data Center REITs Data Center Real Estate Data Center Real Estate Investing Data Center Rent Data Center Report Data Center Research Data Center Tax Incentives Georgia Data Center investing Data Center leasing report Data Centers Data Centers 2019 Data Centers 2020 Data Centers For Sale Data center absorption 2018 Data centers DataBank DataCenters# Databank DevOps Digital Bridge Digital Realty Digital Realty Trust Digital Realty Trust Atlanta Digital Realty Trust Chicago Digital Realty Trust Dallas Digital Realty Trust acquires Dupont Fabros Digital Realty Trust merger Digital Realty buys Chicago data center Digital Realty buys Dupont Fabros. Dupont Fabros Dupont Fabros merger Durham Data Center EQIX Enterprise Data Centers Equinix Equinix Dallas Equinix buys Infomart Equinix buys Verizon Data Centers F5 Networks Facebook Atlanta Data Center Facebook Data Center Ft. Worth Data Center GI Partners GOOG GOOGL Gartner Georgia Data Center Legislation Global Switch Google Google Cloud Google Data Centers HPC Data Centers High Performance Computing Data Centers Hyperscale Hyperscale Data Centers Hyperscale data center locations Hyperscale data centers Hyperscale growth IBM IBM data centers IPFS IRM data center expansion Infomart Infomart Dallas Iron Mountain Iron Mountain Data Centers Iron Mountain buys Fortrust Iron Mountain buys IO Data Centers KKR Level 3 MSFT MapleTree buys data centers Meta Columbus Microsoft Microsoft Cloud Microsoft Data Center Microsoft data center NOVA Data Center market NOVA Hyperscale Data Centers NXTVn New Chicago Data Center New Jersey Data Center Northern Virginia Absorption Northern Virginia Hyperscale Data Centers Nuclear power data centers Nvidia Nvidia AI Data Centers Oracle Cloud Oracle data center Peak 10 Private Equity Data Centers Private equity data centers Public Cloud QTS QTS Data Center Atlanta QTS data center Redhat data center cloud Santa Clara Data Center Secondary Data Center Markets Sells Data Center Sells Data Center 2019 Sentinel Shaw Communications Switch Switch Data Center Atlanta Switch data center Atlanta T5 Data Center Atlanta Telefonica TierPoint TierPoint# Time Dotcom US Low Cost Power States US Power Grab US data center market report 2018 Vantage Vantage Data Centers Verizon ViaWest Virginia Beach Cable Landing Station Virginia Beach Data Center Park Virginia data center park Wall Street Journal Windstream Zayo ata center blockchain big data blockchain data center blockchain data storage blockchain file storage buys data center and colocation business buys data centers cloud data center cloud data centers data center data center acquisitions data center advisory data center broker data center consultant data center consulting data center for lease data center for sale data center investments data center leasing data center market data center market research data center news data center outage data center real estate data center sale leaseback data center sales data center tax incentives data center trends data centers data centers for sale delta data center delta outage dropbox data center emerging data center trends hybrid cloud hyperscale data centers north carolina data centers renewable nuclear energy data centers