Organizations are increasingly turning to hybrid cloud as the platform of choice as they continue to respond to changing business conditions caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to research by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) on cloud acceleration and remote work, a recent survey by KPMG sheds light specifically on the value of hybrid cloud.

Per KPMG: “Hybrid cloud models top the agenda, far surpassing other cloud strategies, including multicloud, that dominated pre-crisis. Major enterprises are planning to adopt this architectural cloud approach in the future to reduce risk of service disruption, extend the corporate network and functional workloads, take advantage of the best available services and features, and improve the flexibility and interoperability of the business.”

Organizations today have greater flexibility than ever in choosing how to deploy hybrid cloud. This article explores three benefits of using an as-a-service hybrid cloud model and how innovative organizations have been able to leverage this model to achieve business transformation.Play Video

Benefits of Hybrid Cloud as a Service
One of the learnings from COVID is that IT teams need to be prepared for anything, with the agility to move quickly to preserve business continuity and adapt to changing market conditions—whether that is a shift to remote work or new business models created by digital transformation.

In this environment, an as-a-service hybrid cloud model offers tremendous flexibility and agility because organizations can take advantage of the benefits of the cloud without having to give up the control they have traditionally experienced on premises. Key benefits include:

1. Opex vs. Capex: Cloud computing has been a catalyst in enabling IT to shift to an Opex model where IT is delivered as a service with consumption-based pricing. However, with public-cloud-only services, many organizations have seen costs run out of control, particularly as applications scale. With a hybrid cloud model, IT organizations can move to an Opex model without giving up control and can migrate applications at their own pace, without risking business continuity gaps or disruptions.
2. Flexibility and simplicity: With a hybrid cloud solution like HPE GreenLake Cloud Services, IT can centralize management of all services, workloads and applications, wherever they are located—in the cloud, on premises or at the edge. Using a single hybrid cloud platform, IT can get a unified view to monitor costs, performance, compliance, security and more. In addition, IT can offload the monitoring and management of on-premises and public clouds to world-class IT operations centers.
3. Speed to innovation: HPE GreenLake customers have been able to shorten their time to market by an average of 75%, according to a Total Economic Impact™ Study by Forrester Research. Benefits include self-service reporting to forecast future capacity demands; improved efficiencies in executing IT projects; the ability to quickly scale capacity; and reduced time spent on procurement to line up with business needs.

Hybrid Cloud Digital Game Changers
Kern County: As the third largest county in California in square miles with nearly a million residents, Kern County was looking to centralize and modernize its IT and technology operations and deliver a cloud experience on premises. The organization adopted HPE GreenLake to gain the agility, flexibility and innovation of the cloud while preserving the compliance, governance, cost control and visibility benefits of running its applications and workloads on premises.

When COVID-19 hit, Kern County used HPE GreenLake’s elasticity to increase its capacity for virtual desktop infrastructure. Under a legacy model, the county would have had to initiate a procurement process and provision the order, which would have taken weeks or months. Using an as-a-service hybrid cloud solution, the county was able to adjust immediately and equip workers with remote desktops without disruption to business operations or significant additional capital expenses.

Mizuho Bank: Mizuho Bank is a leading global bank with one of the largest customer bases in Japan. Like many organizations, the bank was looking for a solution that enables the agility to respond quickly to unforeseen changes, while delivering the reliability, security and performance required by a world-class financial services leader. To meet these objectives, the bank modernized its private cloud platform with a hybrid solution.

Mizuho Bank adopted HPE GreenLake to deploy infrastructure hardware and software as a monthly IT expense, building an adaptable and scalable platform on HPE Synergy. With the solution in place, the bank has been able to reduce IT investment and total cost of ownership, deliver services to enhance the customer experience, and adapt more readily and easily to changing business demands, such as those created by COVID-19.

The bank has achieved its goal of implementing a solution that enables it to respond quickly to unforeseen changes. “With the increasing uncertainty in both business and technology, developing a service platform with excellent adaptability to change is a major achievement,” according to Ryota Tazuki, deputy general manager of IT and the system control department at Mizuho Bank.

Resource : https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/DrivingITSuccess/3-Key-Benefits-of-Hybrid-Cloud-as-a-Service?