Regulations governing data control in various countries in which multinational companies operate are a significant driver of hybrid on-premise and off-premise information technology (IT) systems, while in-house and external business demands reinforce this trend.

User experience is paramount to provide business value from IT systems, and this is reflected in the industries that are actively pursuing a hybrid strategy. Mining, financial services, retail and government services are the most common adopters of hybrid enterprise strategies in South Africa, says application performance company Riverbed Technology UK and Southern Africa VP Karl Campbell.

A hybrid enterprise strategy unifies and rationalises the IT infrastructure and systems of an organisation while enforcing service standards to provide consistent customer experiences.

“These user experiences include the experiences of employees who use company resources to fulfil their functions. If they are not able to get satisfactory performance out of these systems, they will often use external, and uncontrolled, resources to carry out the functions.

“Most companies are hybrid enterprises, though often informally. The importance of a hybrid enterprise strategy also pertains to the risks posed to companies and their operations regarding discontinuity and the length of disruptions, such as those caused by a disaster and the duration of subsequent recovery.”

These risk criteria underpin the design of hybrid enterprise architectures, which will also focus on opportunities and be in line with business strategy, explains Campbell.

“Our first goal when designing a hybrid enterprise strategy is to determine how data flows into, out of and within a company, and how it is linked to business functions, identifying any bottlenecks.

“Once this is known, various data can be prioritised and critical application data flows optimised, while noncritical or nonbusiness data flows, such as Facebook traffic, can be separated and/or moved along other channels.”

A hybrid strategy enables an organisation to use business risks and imperatives to inform IT system architecture.

“For example, mines would want to enable various sites and branches to operate independently if there were a disruption in the connection with head offices, “ says Campbell, adding that this will help to determine which systems should be hosted on site, compared with the resources available over networks, as well as redundancy, fail-over and recovery systems.

Conversely, much of the costly equipment can be removed from commercial offices and replaced with virtualised systems connected to a centralised and managed data centre in a cloud format. This also enables companies to reduce exposure to theft or damage and to control data flows. Internal cloud infrastructure requirements and use of external resources are also determined and enabled by a hybrid enterprise strategy.

“An initiative to base an enterprise’s IT infrastructure and architecture on its business strategy will provide good value, specifically as business functions must dictate IT operations and evolution, and make future expansion plans more visible, adaptable and controllable,” concludes Campbell.