The paradigm is shifting. The days of the monolithic application are dwindling in favor of applications built using the microservice model. Applications built upon the microservice model using containers are referred to as “cloud-native” and are the future of application development and delivery. For this very reason, organizations are deploying on-premises clouds to leverage this new application development and delivery platform. In many cases, organizations connect their on-premises cloud (also known as private cloud) to a public cloud provider, creating a hybrid cloud to take advantage of the flexibility and agility of workload placement.

In Cloud 1.0, the early days of cloud, the focus was around the cloud service models of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. This included the cloud consumption model of “pay only for what you consume”, also known as metered billing, and the OPEX nature of these cloud services. Summary: cloud 1.0 was about a new service delivery and consumption model.

In Cloud 2.0, the present day of cloud, the focus has shifted to the agility and flexibility of application development, application delivery and workload placement with an understanding that features of Cloud 1.0 are still desired and sought after. Summary: cloud 2.0 is about a new application development and delivery platform.

Knowing that on-premises cloud is a software stack that resides on clustered servers and relies on the underlying storage infrastructure, and knowing that user expectations of cloud native applications are that they are “always available, anywhere, at any time”, the questions for many in organizations who are contemplating implementing on-premises cloud or about to implement an on-premises cloud are: “Can my current storage infrastructure support on-premises cloud?” and “If not, what items do I need to address? …or… What actions do I need to take?”

Good news: IBM Lab Services has built the Hybrid Cloud Acceleration (HCA) assessment to answer those exact questions. For organizations that would like consultative assistance with deep storage infrastructure and cloud expertise, the HCA offering is a great vehicle to ensure your storage infrastructure is prepared for the onboarding of an on-premises cloud stack and can support hybrid cloud functionality.

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