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The benefits hybrid cloud can bring to businesses are not in doubt. What is less understood, however, is how much is too much?

No organisation is likely to jump in with both feet, placing almost all their IT services on public cloud servers due to concerns about control. Yet at the same time, finding the sweet spot – where the business is gaining the maximum benefit from a perfect balance of on-premise IT, private cloud and public cloud services can be extremely difficult.

Has the organisation gone too far and put business operations at risk? Or are they holding back and essentially handicapping themselves? Since every organisation’s needs and responsibilities are unique, there is no easy, one size fits all answer. So how can an enterprise ensure its hybrid IT is, in the words of Goldilocks, just right?

Mapping out the territory

As with any IT project, an organisation adopting hybrid cloud must understand two things: where it is, and where it needs to be. To begin with, the IT department needs to map out its current IT services, followed by the IT environment it currently uses to provide them. It should be able to answer precisely what IT infrastructure provides what services to what part of the business; as well as the skills and other resources that support those services, and the value that they provide to the business. Once it has this understanding, the department can then begin to map out its future.

Put simply, if the loss of an application means the loss of the business, it should be kept safely in-house

This should again start with the services the business will need. If the IT department knows the business’s strategy for the next three, five, or more years, it should know what services will be crucial in supporting that strategy and meeting the relevant milestones. These services should then be mapped to the infrastructure, applications, skills and other resources that they will need to run. Armed with this map, IT will see at a glance precisely how its current capabilities match up with those the business will demand.

With this knowledge, the organisation can develop a hybrid cloud strategy to meet those demands. This is not as simple as keeping all current capacity in-house and using the public cloud to address any shortfalls. For instance, for some services it may be more cost-effective to expand on an in-house application or infrastructure; or to re-train skilled personnel, than to adopt a public cloud service; while for others the exact opposite may be true. The IT department needs to investigate each service in detail to understand precisely where each one is best served; whether that is in-house or on the public cloud.

Knowing the crown jewels

Part of this process will be identifying which applications should never be placed on the public cloud. This means knowing the crown jewels of the organisation; those business-critical applications where failure, or losing control of data, would have catastrophic consequences.

One example of this would be an airline’s reservation system. If this fails, it would cause significant damage to both revenue and reputation. At the same time, the system will contain extremely sensitive personal and financial data on passengers; which present a major risk to the business and its customers if lost. Outsourcing such an application would put the airline at the mercy of its service providers’ practices, rather than having complete control itself. Quite simply, if the loss of an application means the loss of the business, it should be kept safely in-house.

Business needs

On the other end of the scale, IT should be wary of excessive caution; keeping applications in-house when it no longer benefits the business to do so.

IT should however be wary of excessive caution, and keeping applications in-house when it no longer benefits the business to do so

Losing control of an application, or putting the organisation at risk or failing compliance, is an understandable worry. However, in many cases this can lead to IT becoming a function for its own sake, rather than an important function in supporting the business’s overall strategy.

For example, a solicitors’ firm should be focused on providing legal services to its clients and building its business. For every application that is kept in-house, IT will spend more time on troubleshooting and firefighting, rather than supporting those core goals. While the firm’s crown jewels, such as case and document management, will remain firmly in-house, other lower-risk and-value applications can be placed on the public cloud; freeing up IT department resources to focus on critical applications or new projects.

Knowledge is power

In conclusion, knowledge is power. The IT department that knows the services it has, the services it needs, and the changes it has to make to get there, will be able to identify its perfect cloud sweet spot: where the crown jewels are kept in the business, but the IT department’s energy is not spent performing housekeeping for low-risk, low-value applications.

This will be where IT services are providing the maximum value to the business, regardless of where they actually reside.

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Cloud storage provider Dropbox has launched a new enterprise product, as well as making other announcements at an event in San Francisco.

For those asking the inevitable question of ‘doesn’t Dropbox already have an enterprise product?’, then the answer is yes – Dropbox for Business, which has more than 100,000 users – but this product enhances those features to include new account management tools for greater security.

Among these are a suspended user state option, which allows for greater flexibility when employees leave a company; the ability for team admins to log in to an employee’s account; as well as custom branding capabilities.

“With Dropbox Enterprise, IT can give employees the Dropbox they love while getting the advanced capabilities they need to effectively onboard and manage tens of thousands of users, protect company data, and get the most from their investment,” a company blog post read.

While the statistics associated with Dropbox are impressive – 4,000 edits to documents are made each second, with users syncing 1.2 billion files each day and creating more than 100,000 new shared folders and links each hour – the company continues, despite its best efforts, to trail an image of being more consumer-friendly in the media. This may have a point; research released this week from MobileIron revealed that Dropbox remained among the top banned apps by enterprises – providing precisely no change to figures Fiberlink released back in 2013.

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston vehemently argued the case for his company during the event. According to WIRED, Houston mentioned a competitor – not by name, but by all accounts Box – and argued Dropbox had accrued more business customers across 10 months than Box had during its lifetime.

Other announcements the company made served to beef up its enterprise stake. Dropbox announced it now meets HIPAA and HITECH Act compliance obligations, helping customers that handle Protected Health Information (PHI). Elsewhere, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is to become a premier reseller of Dropbox for Business products. The company officially launched earlier this month, with $53 billion in annual revenue.

(c)iStock.com/AzmanL

The emergence of the cloud has dramatically changed the way businesses operate and collaborate. With trends such as flexible working and the gig or sharing economy on the rise, communication is now more important than ever to enable colleagues to keep in touch regardless of time zone or location.

Here are just a few of the ways the cloud can be utilised to ensure effective collaboration:

Access anywhere

With the gig economy rising to prominence, an increasing number of professionals are choosing contract and short-term work over full-time. This means, employees need the right technology to be able to communicate and work effectively from any location. Tools such as Google Docs allow staff to access and edit documents online and cloud-based video conferencing provides employees with the ability to have face-to-face interaction even when working remotely.

Flexibility

Following the introduction of the UK government’s flexible working initiative, more workers are choosing to work flexibly to help improve their work-life balance. To maintain workplace productivity when out of the office, the cloud is essential.

Mobility

With the cloud it is possible to use any device from any location to collaborate, if you’re running late to a meeting or without any Wi-Fi, you can use the 4G on your phone or tablet on the move instead. In today’s always-on, always-connected world, staff need the option to work whenever they need to and on various devices on the go.

Up to date tech

Organisations need to be using the latest technology to stay ahead of the competition.  With the cloud, you are not using hardware which will soon become outdated, but software which is likely to be updated and refreshed frequently.

Whilst it offers a great way for businesses to operate in the digital economy and helps improve the worker experience by encouraging flexible working, there are also key challenges businesses still face when using cloud.

As more staff make use of trends such as BYOD, the higher the threat of security becomes. Organisations should ensure there are quality checks and security in place when staff bring their own devices into enterprise networks. Another issue for cloud can be connectivity, without strong and reliable bandwidth, tools like video conferencing can sometimes be challenging. Workers should always try to check Wi-Fi capabilities before entering into video calls to save difficulties.

All in all, a huge proportion of businesses now use the cloud in the daily routine. Whether it is for flexibility, mobility or collaboration, it’s potentially crucial for success in today’s digital economy. With the world’s personal cloud alone estimated to be worth $90 billion by 2020 – it’s fair to say that cloud is huge business.

As today’s workforce continues to evolve, companies should ensure they have everything in place to provide cloud computing and the benefits that come with it.