Information technology (IT) multinational subsidiary BT Africa’s managed cloud services enable companies to integrate multiple cloud infrastructure providers into one point of consumption, aligning costs and improving agility, as well as ensuring companies retain control over their data.

Hybrid cloud provides flexibility and scalability to use technology that aligns best with the needs of the business service – often referred to as mechanical sympathy – without having to compromise as a result of a specific or legacy technology, says BT Africa Datacentre & Cloud Service head Kevin Krige.

Modern cloud offerings are architected for resilience, security and efficiency at scale, providing productivity, agility and durability gains companies would be hard-pressed to deliver on their own infrastructure within their own data centres at a similar cost, he explains.

“The mix between private, public and hybrid cloud is different for every business,” Krige adds.

The applications and services a business delivers to end-users, where they are based and how they access business data, along with any industry-specific data legislation, need to be taken into account, he advises.

However, businesses can take advantage of the combination of private- and public-cloud economics to meet specific security, governance or performance metrics for applications and services that would have remained on legacy infrastructure, notes Krige.

“The benefit of hybrid-cloud platforms is that the data owner is in control over where they geographically deploy their infrastructure and store their data, and provide the flexibility to store data in private or public clouds in multiple geographic regions to meet the individual requirements of each territory in which a global business might operate.”

Cloud providers make the tools and design templates available to easily architect the environment, as well as data encryption to provide high-level data protection. Additionally, companies can deploy highly durable, fault-tolerant and available architectures in the cloud at a much lower cost than on-premises deployments, he says.

Krige emphasises that companies retain control of data by having a clearly defined cloud adoption strategy and architecture principles.

“Data is typically lost or at risk when an organisation loses control over it, which is often a result of a poor adoption strategy where businesses acquire a service without insight into how to use the technology’s full benefit, how their data will be stored, shared and secured, and what end-users will do with this data.”

Hybrid-cloud strategies combine private- and public-cloud services with an intelligent network and in-built security services, and enable a business to transition to the cloud at their own speed while ensuring flexibility and compliance.

“This will, in turn, create a suitable environment for businesses to move to platform-based models when required,” says Krige.

Businesses need to use cloud to serve their specific business needs. However, it does come with added complexity.

To deliver true multicloud benefits, a business requires new processes, as well as the right resources and skills, to manage networks, data centres and security, which are difficult to find and retain. Solution providers help companies to overcome this challenge of access to skills and can configure specific and suitable solutions for different lines of business or geographies.

Cloud must provide business agility without infrastructure responsibility. Chief IT officers should, therefore, develop a centralised cloud strategy as the foundation for governing the use of cloud services across the organisation, notes Krige.

“While any cloud strategy should be informed by business strategy, the IT operations team should also have an active voice in formulating it in partnership with managed cloud service providers.”

He concludes that the ability to deliver a globally consistent service, as well as cost and scale benefits across the organisation, while retaining agility and accessing innovation, is key to support digital transformation and manage capacity, data resilience and service-delivery risks.