Best of Both Worlds
A traveler came upon an old farmer hoeing in his field beside the road. The wanderer hailed the countryman, who looked up from his work.
“How long will it take me to get to the next town?” asked the stranger.
“I can’t rightly say,” was the farmer’s curt reply.
Insulted, the traveler strode off.
“About an hour,” shouted the farmer after him.
“Why didn’t you say so when I first asked?”
“Because I didn’t know how fast you were walking.”
Speed
In today’s business world, speed is important. A business’ ability to quickly and effectively conceive new approaches, implement new strategies, and adopt new processes can mean the difference between rags or riches. And, as we shift from the third industrial revolution to the fourth, technology now plays a critical, if not the most important role.
Ultimately, to meet the demands of and survive in the fourth industrial revolution, business must be able to adapt to change. Instantly. Adapting to change in a technology dependent industry is a challenge, but a challenge only made more difficult in a single cloud world, especially if that cloud is only private in nature.
Both in my professional and personal life I’ve witnessed firsthand, as I’m sure most of you have, the major impacts on agile organizations from how we interact with each other, how we consume media, how we order goods, and from how we can see people across the world on a handheld device. The pace of change is increasing exponentially with each passing day, and the negatives of such rapid change are felt close to home. In the past several years, Canada saw the following impacts to retail:
- HBC – stores closing.
- Future Shop – 66 stores permanently closed with the rest converting to Best Buy.
- Sears – closed and bankrupt in 2018.
- HMV – closed all stores in 2017.
- Toys ‘R’ Us – on the brink of closing.
- Zellers – Target buyout and eventually exit from Canadian market.
These impacts to Canadian market can be due to several factors but, notably, they’re caused by the changing demands of consumers, alternative methods of obtaining goods and services, and the business’ inability to adapt to change quickly and effectively.
Now, let’s regroup, determine how cloud can provide the toolsets necessary to meet and exceed demand.
Hybrid Cloud
If we’re to focus on the technology enablers for unlocking agility, on one side, we have the controlled, secured, and dedicated private cloud where business has invested in technologies to meet current requirements. On the other side, we have the immense scalability, flexibility, and reliability of public cloud to expand capabilities of existing investments, gaining new modus operandi.
This is the hybrid cloud – the best of both cloud worlds, private and public. Two cloud models working in unison to provide the ultimate service delivery flexibility while maintaining the comfort, control and secure requirements of private cloud where and when required. And, in next weeks post, we’ll explore hybrid cloud and the advantages (as well as disadvantages) of this computing model.
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