It’s taken quite a while, but the healthcare industry is finally moving toward hybrid cloud adoption.

The results of a survey involving 2,300 information-technology decision makers published earlier this year found that hybrid cloud deployment in the healthcare industry was expected to grow from a paltry 19% penetration to 37% within two years.

This is music to the ears of companies such as Versatile Communications Inc., an IT services management firm that has done a significant amount of work over 25 years in supporting the unusual needs of the healthcare industry, among other clients.

“Every 18 months, their storage requirements double,” said John Barker (pictured), co-founder and chief executive officer of Versatile. “On top of that, because of compliance issues, they have to hang onto their data indefinitely. That’s got to be a frightening aspect for any storage manager who’s trying to manage a large healthcare organization.”

Barker spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-host of theCUBE, at SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio in Boston, Massachusetts. They discussed hybrid cloud adoption in various segments of the healthcare industry and how Versatile’s partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. has helped meet the IT demands of customers (see the full discussion with transcript here.) (* Disclosure below.)

Hospitals ahead of clinics

Hospital organizations have been more willing to adopt cloud infrastructure than clinics or individual practitioners, according to Barker. That will likely change as the industry moves forward.

“Certainly, at the hospital level, they are little bit ahead of the game in terms of how they manage their resources, the data,” Barker explained. “A lot of us aren’t going to hospitals anymore; we’re going to clinics. From a healthcare perspective, technology will be the savior despite that most doctors or clinicians almost look at it as a burden.”

Versatile has partnered with HPE for a number of years to deliver IT solutions. Customers have been especially receptive to automated tools, such as InfoSight, an artificial intelligence-driven operational solution for the hybrid cloud.

“The machine itself is starting to take care of a lot of the things you would expect your IT folks to either worry about or manage,” Barker said. “With InfoSight and tools from HPE on the storage side, you’re starting to get some analytics that are taking a more proactive look at what the infrastructure is doing. For hybrid cloud and hybrid storage and compute, HPE has an advantage there.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Versatile Communications Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. HPE, Versatile or other sponsors do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE