Hybrid Cloud Emerges as a Hot Topic at Interop

In a recent article for PC Magazine, reporter Michael Miller rehashed some of the key issues discussed during last week’s Interop conference. The hybrid cloud emerged as one of the most prominent themes of the event, encompassing conversation around trends in mobile device usage and IT consumerization. In his article, Miller outlines both the forces driving the hybrid environment and its corresponding challenges for IT organizations.

Mobile

A big factor driving enterprise cloud adoption is the ubiquity of mobile devices. Employees no longer expect their work to be tied to their desk. End-users want flexibility — and are demanding access to their business applications through smartphones, laptops and tablets. Writes Miller:

“Steve Shalita, vice president of marketing at NetScout Systems, Inc.,  said that how enterprises deal with the “roundtrip” — bringing applications to a public cloud and back again—is a big issue. It will become a bigger one if enterprises move mission-critical applications to the cloud.”

End-user experience

Miller also describes the growing drive toward simplicity, emphasizing how enterprise organizations are focused on the end-user experience. The challenge? Many cloud vendors are still talking about fast set up and easy deployment. Instead, “they need to deal with end to end performance management and latency management,” according to Miller.