Hybrid cloud is the latest trend in enterprise computing, but hybrid cloud is much too limited and inflexible to meet the fast evolving needs of the enterprise.

Hybrid cloud presumes one on-premise cloud and one off-premise cloud on an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform such as Amazon Web Services, IBM/SmartCloud, Microsoft Azure, or Rackspace, Inc.. In fact, however, medium-to-large companies are likely to use a variety of cloud-delivered services including software-as-a-service (SaaS) and more than one IaaS service. As time goes on, the situation will only become more complex as the organization adds more SaaS, IaaS and other cloud-delivered services as well as additional internal clouds.

What companies really need is a much more flexible architecture that can unify all its cloud services, internal and external, which is what Wikibon Analyst Steve Chambers calls the “Composite Cloud” (see graphic on right).  This should be designed and managed to be adaptable and extensible, maintaining consistent elements such as identity and encompassing variable elements such as private cloud resources.

That will allow enterprises to combine resources, such as CRM on Salesforce.com, Inc., with online customer-facing transaction systems on AWS, company financials on the Oracle cloud and the company ERP system on the private cloud to gain an overall view of business in progress by customer and/or product and its impact on the business as a whole. That could become the basis for analysis to determine which are the company’s most valuable products or services, which are its most valuable customers, where it needs to improve operations, what products or customers may be costing the company more than they are worth and where the company can invest in new opportunities.

Enterprises should elevate their thinking above independent elements such as public, private and hybrid to build an enterprise-wide cloud encompassing all of those elements, plus SaaS and other services, Chambers writes.

Chambers’ full Professional Alert on composite cloud is available on the new Wikibon Premium Web site along with other alerts by Chambers and other Wikibon analysts.

Graphic © 2015 Wikibon