Hybrid Clouds Move to the Forefront

D espite cloud computing’s enormous popularity and high profile, many companies have been dissatisfied because they haven’t found what they want in a single cloud architecture. Private clouds, which organizations run internally, are secure, accessible without Internet availability, and customizable. Public clouds run over the Internet and are scalable, less costly, and simple to adopt and use. Until recently, organizations could not easily and economically integrate and operate both types of architectures as part of one overall cloud system. Now, though, companies are seamlessly merging private and public approaches, creating a hybrid cloud that lets them reap some of the benefits of each, noted Panos Tsirigotis, chief software architect and cofounder of hybridcloud vendor CloudVelocity. Hybrid cloud adoption will be easy for many organizations because they already have an in-house cloud and need only leverage existing public capabilities, explained University of Texas at Dallas associate professor Murat Kantarcioglu. The technology potentially represents a big business opportunity. In fact, market research firm IDC predicts hybrid cloud management tools will generate $3.6 billion in revenue worldwide by 2016. Corporations, service providers, governments, and independent software vendors are all looking to capitalize on this opportunity.