CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mr. Anthony Ho, Director, Regional Product Management, Equinix Asia-Pacific
- What are the ways organizations can build strong foundational infrastructure that fuels their success?
The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation of organizations in India and fast-tracked the adoption of business-critical digital infrastructures. Digital infrastructure is rapidly taking center stage for how businesses achieve competitive advantage and succeed in a digital economy. The continued supply chain challenge is driving a need of virtualization, with growth aspirations underpinned by significant planned investment in digital infrastructure. Though we are observing increased movement towards interconnection solutions, and cloud and IT infrastructure, still there is a huge gap in digital adoption and leaders need to accelerate their digital transformation in the post pandemic era.
A hybrid multicloud architecture is a de facto model that brings organizatons tremendous business benefits, including greater performance, flexibility, efficiency and security. Here are six principles which organizations can build strong foundational infrastructure for hybrid multicloud to fuel their success:
- Principle 1: Avoid vendor lock-in
A hybrid multicloud architecture must be able to shift data and compute workloads seamlessly between cloud and on-premises infrastructure.
- Principle 2: Automate with infrastructure as code
Automation is important to the success of today’s cloud-native architecture. Every cloud providers offer automation abilities that work well with their respective services, however these tools can lead to vendor lock-in. To continue to be cloud-agnostic, organizations can automate their hybrid multicloud environments by adopting open architecture to establishment network, compute, storage, and other PaaS, SaaS and security offerings. Deploying and operating immutable infrastructure aids organizations in achieving predictability, operational efficiency, and infrastructure savings.
- Principle 3: Build high-performance connectivity across the hybrid multicloud environment
High-bandwidth, low-latency direct connections between and from on-premises environments to the cloud are among the foundations of a hybrid multicloud strategy. To address business requirements for speed and compliance, organizations can build connectivity using Equinix FabricTM, software-defined interconnection, and virtual network functions (VNF) devices on Equinix’s Network Edge, combined with cloud provider network services such as AWS DirectConnect, Microsoft Azure ExpressConnect, and Google Cloud Interconnect.
- Principle 4: Implement zero-trust security
Cloud infrastructure providers were at the forefront to adopt zero-trust security architecture. Transforming from the castle-and-moat security model to zero-trust security is another advantage of migrating to cloud.
- Principle 5: Ensure reliability and availability
Enhancing overall reliability and availability is crucial to the success of any cloud migration initiative. Consuming managed services to remain cloud-agnostic had the added benefit of improving the security, reliability and availability of stateful services. Finally, running on-premises workloads on Equinix IBX data centers with 99.9999% availability will enhance reliability of the overall hybrid cloud deployment.
- Principle 6: Keep data strategy and cost sensitivity top of mind
Sensitivity, availability, proximity, mobility, AI/ML and OpEx set the base for the cloud migration data strategy. Network egress and performance can drastically impact operating costs if not planned properly. Operating costs should not be ignored when working on a highly available and resilient hybrid multicloud architecture.
- Considering the Google’s Cloud IoT Core service shutdown announcement, how organizations can easily secure, connect, manage and ingest data from dispersed devices on a fully managed platform?
This shutdown highlights the importance for organizations to have an integrated vendor diagnostic platform for hybrid multicloud models, which we believe is rapidly becoming the cloud strategy of choice for enterprises across many industry sectors. This hybrid approach removes the risk of dependency on one provider for your cloud and infrastructure needs. Now, as cloud adoption shows no signs of slowing down, it is critical for organizations to re-evaluate and future-proof their digital infrastructure to drive agility, flexibility, and operational efficiencies, which minimizes any potential impact of a cloud service shutting down in the future.
- How has the shutdown impacted Equinix and larger digital infrastructure ecosystem of the country?
Over the past two years, the pandemic turned out to be a reality check for several organizations to digitize their operations and day to day activities, with several of them adopted cloud as a reactive solution. However, as we enter the post-pandemic recovery era, businesses are re-evaluating their cloud strategies for the next chapter of evolution, and many are actually realizing the drawbacks of relying on siloed systems. With Google announcing the shutdown of its Cloud IoT Core services, users will now have to look for a substitution that provides similar functionality and fits their unique needs.
To minimize any potential impact of a cloud service shutting down in the future, organizations should rethink their digital infrastructure and adopt a hybrid multicloud model. Organizations should move to “as-a-service” OPEX models to get the solutions they need without being locked into a single vendor or a restrictive architecture. A single, global platform approach with private, high-speed, low-latency interconnection to multiple clouds is crucial to ensure digital resilience.
- What is integrated vendor diagnostic platform for hybrid multicloud models?
As companies advance their digital transformation and seek opportunities to maximize their cloud investments, the ability to migrate cloud applications quickly and easily is essential. An integrated vendor diagnostic platform for hybrid multicloud models operate behind the scenes to help businesses connect the different components of their architecture, thereby ensuring that everything works well together, performs optimally and delivers superior security. This hybrid approach eliminates the risk of dependency on one provider for organization’s cloud and infrastructure needs. Considering cloud adoption is nowhere going to slow down, it is crucial for organizations to re-evaluate and future-proof their digital infrastructure to drive agility, flexibility, and operational efficiencies, which reduces any potential impact of a cloud service shutting down in the future.
This integrated vendor diagnostic platform allows customers to choose vendors, providers, regional specialists, and innovators in the industry’s largest ecosystem, to connect with thousands of partners in real time, directly and privately, for increased performance, security and scale. Transact with ease while you supply, consume and integrate networks, storage, and computing applications over a single orchestrated interconnection platform
- Outlook on cloud adoption in coming years.
According to Equinix’s ‘2022 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS)’, despite the key role cloud services already play within the digital economy, there’s still room for significant growth in the future and around 86% of Indian IT leaders intend to move more functions into the cloud over the next year. In terms of deployment model, 23% of IT leaders in India are deploying hybrid cloud, while 93% of them are working with two or more cloud providers.
While adoption of public cloud services is nearly ubiquitous, the breadth of usage of these services is also increasing at an accelerated pace. Indeed, over the next two years, a 45% increase in the number of organizations running more than 30% of their production applications on public cloud infrastructure is expected.
Over the next decade, hybrid multicloud will be one of the crucial pillars for organizations to advance their digital-first strategies and adopt IT Infrastructure as a Service. With overcoming cloud, data and ecosystem complexity through automation, AI/ML, APIs and edge services, digital leaders will gain a significant competitive edge.
Cloud automation will fast – track digital infrastructure consumption:
With the lines diminishing between private and public cloud and on-premises workloads, hybrid multicloud complexity is expanding. Cloud automation that benefits AI/ML-enabled cloud services will substantially cut down the management overhead and costs of public cloud infrastructure and functions. Cloud automation will also enhance critical functions like DevOps for application modernization and security for risk detection across all hybrid multicloud architectures—accelerating labor-intensive functions for higher optimization.
Connected cloud ecosystems will boost infrastructure agility
In coming future, hybrid multicloud will be one of the strongest pillar for organizational growth. Operating in an interconnected ecosystem of diverse cloud service providers will support in unlocking advanced use cases and enhanced sources of business value. Enterprises will have to democratize cloud access and take advantage of AI/ML to shift workloads between clouds dynamically, this will help in keeping hybrid multicloud ecosystems operational as a coherent whole rather than a series of disjointed pieces. Cloud-native companies will also be transforming sides as they move out of the cloud into on-premises infrastructure for better performance and scalability, providing enterprises further more hybrid cloud options.
- What should organizations consider doing when such services shut down? What role would Equinix play in this?
As the world’s infrastructure company™, Equinix is here to help organizations bring together and interconnect the foundational infrastructure that fuels their success. Today, more than 3,000 organizations around the world are relying on Equinix FabricTM, a software- defined interconnection service, to connect with multiple cloud providers. Organizations can navigate the cloud and hybrid multicloud strategies for operational efficiency through the seamless integration of our suite of products. For example, the integration of Network Edge and Equinix Metal™ with Equinix Fabric ensures low latency and private interconnection that brings together 10,000 counterparties and all major cloud and SaaS platforms to meet customers’ preferences. Businesses can avoid vendor lock-ins and move data and compute workloads easily between cloud and on-premises infrastructure, providing them with the flexibility to adapt when necessary.
