What exactly is a “hybrid cloud”? What is the state of hybrid cloud today, and what is the vision for its future? These were the central questions debated by the Wikibon community and a panel of experts in the #HybridCloud CrowdChat last week (Wikibon is a sister company of SiliconANGLE). The event drew more than 80 participants from a variety of industries, who posted 470 comments and questions in a lively hour-long discussion.

How quickly attitudes have changed. In a 2012 Wikibon survey, 90 percent of IT practitioners said cloud was “a buzzword of unclear meaning.” Today, 90 percent are using cloud in some form. That is “a significant shift in sentiment,” said Wikibon Co-Founder and Chief Analyst David Vellante. It’s a shift that’s occurring across the board as well. A poll of participants in the chat session found that, in Vellante’s words, “a multi-dimensional set of influencers … drives cloud adoption.”

The main questions discussed during the hour were:

• How is cloud a platform for change?
• What are the critical goals of cloud-driven business change?
• What classes of applications are driving these business changes?
• What can you do in a hybrid/private cloud that you can’t do in a public cloud?
• Where will organizations get the developer talent to succeed with hybrid cloud?
• What is missing? Where are the gaps that impact the ability of hybrid cloud-based apps to generate business value?
• What is the role of infrastructure vendors in the hybrid cloud world and what do they have to do to lead?
• In 10 years will there be five or 5,000 infrastructure buyers?

Vellante has posted a partial summary of the CrowdChat on the Wikibon.com Web site, “CrowdChat Summary: Simplify Hybrid Cloud – #HybridCloud” as free research. The full text of the CrowdChat is embedded at the bottom of this article and is also available here.

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