By combining cloud services with on-premises infrastructure, you can give your business more flexibility and innovative power. But this advantage can completely melt away if the management of the hybrid environment doesn't happen efficiently. In this case, innovation in the company could even be hindered rather than encouraged. It could also compromise the general overview of the IT use and control of the IT budget.

Maintain the overview

A recent survey by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) shows that organisations now have about a quarter of their workloads running in the public cloud on average. Most of these organisations use several cloud service providers for this. The workloads that run locally aren't usually streamlined either: they run partly on physical servers, partly on virtual systems managed as traditional servers and partly in a private cloud.

So the hybrid cloud is, just because it is hybrid, extremely complex to manage. If you want to be sure that your cloud environment isn't slowing down your business but boosting it, then it's important to maintain an overview and control of the entire multi-cloud environment. This is only possible if your internal IT organisation has the necessary knowledge, experience and expertise to do this. Or you can decide to use a managed service provider. In this way, your internal IT talent remains available for projects with more business value.

Which applications on which platform?

An external specialist can immediately help you overcome the first obstacle: which applications run best on which platform and from which supplier, and which cloud options best meet your specific needs? Then there is the cloud migration itself. This requires not only knowledge of every cloud technology, but also how the different platforms are integrated with each other. Only if this is done correctly will you ultimately have a hybrid cloud environment where the location of the data doesn't matter to the users. The point is to have everything working properly and optimally available. If your hybrid cloud is managed centrally as one environment, you also keep control of the use and costs associated with it. That way, you get the maximum out of your investment and you can really use the cloud as a driver for innovation.

Access to the right expertise

A professional cloud partner ensures that you always have an overview – you remain the owner of your hybrid cloud. Moreover, you have access to the right expertise at the right time. You can also rely on the managed service provider to not only manage your hybrid cloud, but also constantly optimise it when new technologies come on the market.

Some good advice: proceed step by step and go for a results-oriented approach. Not everything has to happen in one go. It is best to look at things with your cloud service provider to determine how to get the most out of your cloud migration without negating your past investments.

Your managed service provider also ensures the desired level of security and guarantees that you are in compliance with legislation such as the GDPR, even if your hybrid cloud evolves. After all, your cloud environment is never completely finished but has to move with your business.