For companies without a core competency in technology, consulting firms often help drive business outcomes that include faster feature releases, incorporating third-party innovation, and improving developer experiences. The conversations with client companies often start with a public cloud approach, but shifts to hybrid infrastructure where public and on-premises resources blend into a flattened control layer, according to Vaibhav Parmar (pictured), partner at multinational consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

“Very quickly we come to the conclusion that a public cloud by itself may not be enough or adequate, and we actually need to think about the hybrid model for a number of reasons,” Parmar said.

Parmar spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Peter Burris (@plburris), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the HPE Discover event in Madrid, Spain. They discussed the current state of hybrid cloud computing and the future of as-a-service offerings. 

Flattened control layers

Modern hardware control interfaces are flattening to provide standardized offerings for controlling and consuming infrastructure, abstracting away the underlying hardware technology. This allows consulting firms to focus on the ease of provisioning and cost-saving attributes when selecting the on-prem infrastructure for hybrid clouds, according to Parmar.

“Those are the attributes that I think are what we see our clients looking for, and behind the scenes how we technologically enable them doesn’t have to be a like-for-like match,” Parmar said. 

This flattening of the infrastructure as a service layer is starting to extend into the platform as a service layer as platform functionalities start to mimic each other, but implementation differences can still affect solution selection. One layer up in the application space, solutions are completely differentiated and are not going to consolidate at all, Parmar added.

“At the software layer we won’t get there because it doesn’t make sense. … We’re going to focus on the business outcome and not necessarily the software itself,” Parmar concluded. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover EU event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the HPE Discover EU event. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE