Connected hybrid cloud: The key to continuous innovation

Partnering with IBM empowers enterprises to transform their IT with a series of progressive steps. This way, enterprises can build on existing investments and get the benefits of cloud incrementally—often starting on prem—rather than waiting for a complete rebuild on public cloud. In addition, a modern hybrid cloud approach can create business value that might currently be constrained by silos which don’t allow processes and data to connect between them.

An effective hybrid cloud approach will help you achieve 5 key business outcomes:

1. Increased business acceleration
2. Higher developer productivity
3. Increased infrastructure efficiency
4. Ensured risk and compliance management
5. Long-term strategic flexibility

The May 2022 cloud report by the IBM Institute for Business Value asserts that a hybrid cloud platform enables you to “integrate applications that run across multiple clouds, moving data securely across the cloud estate and improving business processes and workflows that span multiple clouds.”³ Furthermore, according to the report, “A well-mastered hybrid cloud platform makes … rapid-cycle innovation much more flexible, dramatically faster, more productive, and less expensive, while making data accessible to more innovators inside the enterprise … [enabling] you to innovate anywhere with anyone’s technology.”³ In short, a hybrid cloud platform brings substantial efficiencies to your business—enabling you to innovate with greater security, more quickly and proficiently—thereby helping you reduce time to market.

The role of hybrid multicloud as a source of strategic competitiveness has become vital. Businesses that can orchestrate across clouds and IT infrastructures and create an application-development platform that runs on any provider’s cloud with workloads that execute seamlessly across multiple clouds—will reap the advantages of a fully connected IT. Deepshikha Antes, Global Red Hat® Strategic Partnership Leader with IBM Consulting™, asserts: “CTOs responsible for making hybrid cloud architecture environments that integrate seamlessly are in a pivotal time right now. Scaling to meet demands, managing risk and keeping up with rapidly changing technology are key steps to turn innovative ideas into business value.”⁴

An effective hybrid cloud strategy integrates and connects your multicloud and on-prem environments into a more efficient IT infrastructure. It breaks down silos and enables management and control across multiple clouds, on prem and the edge. In addition, it helps you create an interconnected, open-architecture foundation, affording your business the flexibility and efficiency it demands.

IBM partners with you to creates a unified platform on which you can run and manage your business. By integrating and connecting across all your IT environments, you will be able to:

IBM’s hybrid cloud strategy is about meeting you where you are in your journey. You won’t be asked to replace what you have or rebuild from the ground up. Our strategy focuses on understanding what your business and IT goals are and helping you achieve them in the most efficient way. This is a significant value differentiation designed to help optimize your resources and improve time to market. IBM Consulting can help you bridge the gap between concept and marketable product.

Hybrid multicloud is transformational

Unlocking IT helps you realize the full potential of your diverse computing ecosystem by transforming your operations in 3 key ways.

1. Connect IT environments and create an integrated hybrid multicloud platform.

Streamline your DevOps and create a connected cloud and on-prem infrastructure built on open-source technology. This allows you to access your data where it lives—whether on prem, in the cloud or both; optimize your workloads for optimal operations; and build your applications where you need them most. How do we help you achieve this unity in the face of diverse and disparate environments? By leveraging the open-source architecture rooted in Red Hat® OpenShift® to provide frictionless interoperability across your hybrid cloud, multicloud and on-prem environments.

With Red Hat OpenShift underpinning an open hybrid cloud architecture, you get a single operating system and a container-orchestration platform that allows you to deploy applications without any hardware dependency. This creates an open hybrid cloud approach that provides the greatest degree of flexibility because it’s vendor agnostic and simplifies how you can more securely distribute, integrate and manage workloads across digital ecosystems.

2. Migrate workloads and modernize your application data.

Address your dynamic workload needs and move mission-critical workloads like VMware to the cloud. Leverage existing technology, tools and skills with an outcome-driven offering that executes across multiple dimensions, including on-prem infrastructure, on-prem clouds and off-prem clouds, application portfolio and security—on a portable, open architecture as the foundation. Modernizing your cloud and on-prem infrastructure with an open architecture simplifies how you can access and manage mission-critical applications and data in the cloud.

Toward this end, our IBM Cloud® for VMware Solutions offering provides seamless and secure migration of your VMware workloads and applications to the cloud. Moreover, our rapid and continuous migration and modernization approaches allow you to efficiently scale new workloads, driving innovation in the service of delivering exceptional customer experiences.

3. Remove barriers to seamless data mobility across environments.

Access your data faster with seamless data mobility across on-prem and cloud storage options and give teams the right data at the right time by removing silos and experiencing faster response times. Optimize your IT investment by virtualizing your on-prem data storage solution and making your data and applications available in the cloud so you can access your data where you need it most, while reducing redundancy and creating a unified and consistent experience in the cloud. We also offer automation integrations that help make the most of your storage solution investments.

With our premier storage offering, IBM FlashSystem®, you can create a bridge for your data and applications to move between your on-prem and off-prem storage solutions and easily move the storage characteristics, data and applications from on-prem to production in the cloud. This offering’s best-in-class performance and efficiency allows you to streamline administration and operations across on-prem, multicloud, virtualized and containerized environments. What’s more, there’s no need to re-train or specialize your team’s skill set.

Hybrid multicloud creates innovative possibilities

The May 2022 IBM Institute for Business Value report, Mastering hybrid cloud, states that, “A single, integrated hybrid cloud platform and application architecture is the chassis on which to mount and connect all the parts [of the automobile]. Instead of discrete components that accomplish little on their own, it’s the whole system that can get you where you need to go—meaning a dramatic improvement in software application development and production. It can mean more agility, speed, and business innovation.”³

IBM will help you create this seamlessly integrated and connected hybrid multicloud environment that is modern and maximizes the business value of your IT investments in the most efficient and cost-friendly way possible with flexible consumption models. Meet complex market demands and regulatory requirements while breaking down cloud silos, clearing the path for more innovation. Integrated and innovative, a truly hybrid cloud strategy allows you to unlock your cloud's full potential and your true business value.

Let’s get to work

At the heart of IBM Consulting is the IBM Garage™, a collaborative, hands-on approach to developing innovative solutions to business challenges. The IBM Garage methodology lives at the intersection of business strategy, design, technology, culture and innovation as a co-creation lab. Together with our clients, we workshop the practices, develop the technologies and provide the expertise their business needs to help chart a transformation journey from ideation to prototyping and beyond.

IBM Garage is at the core of our mission to be the catalyst to make the world work better. It exists to help businesses like yours meet the challenges of today and prepare for those of tomorrow.