The Future of Data Needs a Cloud and On-Premise Solution
How can implementing a hybrid data solution help companies looking for higher data performance and lower costs? Discover in this article.
When it comes to how a business manages its data, cloud-first doesn’t need to mean cloud-only. Mathias Golombek, CTO, Exasol, discusses how going hybrid leaves room for companies to be agile and react to shifts in demand while also freeing them to work with data in a way that best suits their specific needs.
For nearly all organizations today, data is the most important asset within their arsenal. When used properly, data has the potential to help businesses identify challenges, capitalize on opportunities, and make timely decisions that could impact their bottom line.
However, the volume of data that organizations collect grows every day, along with the cost of managing it. According to a study by McKinsey & Co., data-related costs between 2019 and 2021 increased by 50% over the previous three-year period. With the costs of data management mounting quickly, businesses need to ensure that they have the right infrastructure in place to make the best use of their data.
For many organizations, performance and cost are the two most important factors for any successful data strategy. When asked how to achieve this, businesses are often faced with “cloud-only” options. But the truth is that the cloud isn’t a data panacea.
There are ways for companies to manage their data in a scalable, accessible environment that supports both on-premises and cloud operations — in a hybrid infrastructure. For organizations needing to span several different environments, a hybrid approach can give companies the flexibility to be agile and react to shifts in demand while also presenting the opportunity to work with data in a way that best suits an organization’s specific needs.
The Reality of Cloud Only
The challenges of data management have increased with the infusion of data from the cloud and digital systems, but they aren’t new. Many of today’s data-related issues start on-premises, where legacy systems typically underperform. Organizations are aware of the complications with on-premises storage systems and how they can grow beyond an IT team’s ability to manage data efficiently. For many, the next option has been to move storage to the cloud, which can offer nearly unlimited scalability and attractive per-gigabyte prices.
However, while the agility, scalability, and elasticity of the public cloud sound very promising, many companies have realized that migrating applications to the cloud can often become quite costly, especially if the pricing increases linearly with the system usage.
Companies aiming to become data-driven need stellar performance. Organizations want scalable solutions that grow with the company’s strategy while simplifying operations. And they want to be able to do it within their budget and resource constraints. While the use of the cloud is an effective structure for managing an organization’s data, cloud-first shouldn’t mean cloud-only.
See More: 6 Top Considerations as You Evolve Your Cloud Data Management Strategy
Flexibility With a Hybrid Infrastructure
Investing in a hybrid infrastructure is often the answer to many of the data challenges faced by organizations today. That’s because a hybrid environment can provide organizations with the best of both worlds. While the cloud delivers agility and rapid scalability, on-premises systems can be more cost-efficient for heavy-load applications and better protect sensitive data. By being able to deploy one data management solution across both worlds, organizations can achieve the best fit strategy for their investment.
Data can be stored in a public cloud, such as AWS or run natively on the cloud of an organization’s choice. Furthermore, an organization also has the ability to retain complete control over its data, choosing which data can run completely on-premises. By opting for a hybrid approach, companies can select the appropriate deployment for different workloads, depending on regulatory considerations or business needs, which offers both flexibility and agility.
Ultimately, hybrid models can help manage fluctuating levels of demand for data access and processing power, as well as future-proof an organization.
An Effective Data Strategy
Embracing both cloud and on-premises capabilities as part of an overall hybrid solution can provide companies with an effective data strategy. But the goal of becoming a data-driven organization begins with implementing the right systems that will ultimately help the company manage data in the most effective way for its business.
At the core of any data strategy should be a high-performing database that is scalable, flexible, and powerful enough to handle a company’s needs as they grow.
The volume and variety of data are only going to increase, as will the demands for performance and advanced analytics. An organization opting for a flexible solution needs to ensure that the database it uses offers performance to handle the variety of data it works with and the increasing amounts of it while delivering insights with the accuracy and speed that the organization needs.
Different companies have different needs, but all organizations should strive to build the bases for a high-performing, scalable solution with a database that has several specific capabilities, including in-memory analytics, massive parallel processing, and columnar storage.
Reducing Costs and Risk
When it comes to data management, if a company is seeking to move away from a slow, costly system without disruption to their business, a hybrid infrastructure can often be the perfect platform to bridge an organization to the cloud. It can help organizations cater to sensitive, business-critical, on-premises use cases while also creating an integration path to the cloud for workloads that benefit from elasticity and agility. What’s more, a solution with a high-performance database can support an organization’s entire data strategy, enabling those organizations to get the performance they need from their data while at the same time reining in costs.
In today’s data-driven environment, data can be considered the most important asset to a business. It’s the key to everything, from increasing competitiveness in the market to improving risk reduction and cost control. But data is only meaningful if the right systems are implemented so organizations can make the best use of their data. When an organization considers adopting a hybrid-cloud environment, it presents an opportunity for flexibility and scalability, plus cost-effective savings and better performance.
Have you implemented a hybrid data management solution? What benefits have you seen? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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