No one can say that cloud is just a buzzword or a fad anymore; cloud is transforming how companies conduct their day-to-day business. For many CIOs and other executives, the questions surrounding cloud computing are less about whether they should migrate to the cloud but more about how they can do so securely.
Hybrid cloud has become the foundation for companies that are undergoing a digital transformation for several reasons:
- Cost advantages: Companies that use private cloud offerings need to build them to withstand heavy, unpredictable traffic that can be costly. A hybrid solution allows you to manage on-premises infrastructure costs, while leveraging the public cloud for surge capacity on an as needed basis.
- Unlimited scale: The scalability of private cloud solutions is limited by the physical infrastructure on-premises. Hybrid clouds can take advantage of the near infinite power and storage of the public cloud with minimal impact on your private cloud resources.
- Unparalleled agility: By placing your trust in a private cloud model, you also incur the risk that it will fail due to an unexpected outage or disaster. Organizations that use a hybrid cloud, on the other hand, can leverage the public cloud as a backup platform, allowing your services to remain available.
In order to securely deliver applications deployed in a hybrid cloud environment, you need tools that can monitor application availability and security without adding unnecessary complexity. An application delivery controller (ADC) can help you manage these applications, providing end-to-end visibility of the underlying infrastructure and available resources, regardless of where the applications live.
As the cloud computing landscape evolves, your ADC needs to keep up by providing a flexible, adaptable platform:
- For one thing, the ADC you choose should enable you to monitor and view application performance and analytics across the network.
- In addition, your ADC should be equally capable of being deployed within your own private cloud and within public clouds such as Azure and AWS.
- Finally, your ADC needs to be able to automatically scale and self-configure to meet the changing needs of your applications in the cloud.
In order to achieve this flexibility, the ADC you choose needs to have key capabilities that will enable you to maximize your hybrid cloud environment and position you for whatever the future brings.
For instance, your ADC should support a single management console that allows you to view all of your applications, regardless of where they are deployed. Many public cloud providers provide these types of tools, but are unable to extend these capabilities to your private cloud environments.
End-to-end network visibility, however, is only one piece of the puzzle. Find out more in our eBook about ADC management in hybrid cloud environments, where you’ll learn about five other crucial requirements for your business to follow — and what 60 percent of companies will be doing with their applications by next year.
ADCs sit at a critical nexus in any organization’s network, so your choice of ADC must be a strategic one. By opting for an ADC that’s ready to meet the needs of the next generation of applications, you’ll be setting yourself up for success
