8 Reasons to Embrace a Hybrid IT Approach

SMBs and large enterprises alike are increasingly turning to a hybrid IT approach to solve their business challenges. With less resources and more to do, IT is looking for solutions that will increase their efficiency and lower costs. According to MarketsandMarkets, the demand for the hybrid cloud model is growing at a compound rate of 27 percent per year, outpacing the overall IT market.

Hybrid IT is an approach to enterprise computing in which an organization provides and manages some information technology resources in-house but uses cloud-based services for others. Implemented correctly, a hybrid approach can allow an enterprise to maintain a centralized approach to IT governance while experimenting with cloud computing.

The drivers behind hybrid IT adoption can be condensed into these three motivators:

• Greater control over data
• Increased cost effectiveness of cloud components, such as storage-as-a-service and software-as-a-service
• Improved ability to quickly adapt to a rapidly changing business climate

These primary reasons can be broken down further into the following 8 specific points.

• Better Decision Making
  Hybrid IT enables organizations to have easier access to the data they need when they need it to make faster, more informed decisions that will improve operations, profitability and customer relations. Better decision making depends on whether your hybrid IT infrastructure has been developed in a way that will easily scale with your business and protect your data.
• Enforcing Standards
  It is not uncommon for internal IT staff to be overworked and, as a result, documenting systems and policies falls very low on the priority list. If you need to meet and enforce standards at your organization, it may be best to turn to a hybrid IT solution provider who by the nature of their business is required to meet compliance mandates and document all systems, at the risk stiff penalties.
• Additional Resources
  When companies want to make a change but can’t afford the resources to fix bottlenecks and inefficient processes, progress is stalled. If a new contract is awarded that doubles capacity or on-demand resources, organizations need to find a partner who can ease the resource crunch while modernizing systems to handle today’s demands. Hybrid IT solution providers bring access to expertise often not found on your staff, a modernized infrastructure, and reduced overhead expenses.
• Meet Audit Requirements
  Audits are enforced to ensure companies are maintaining regulatory standards. An unsatisfactory audit can hurt your brand’s reputation. A hybrid IT solution provider that stays current on procedures and policies will meet even the most stringent regulatory rules. Because it is the nature of their business, third-party vendors work in accordance with guidelines like HIPAA and PCI to ensure clients will pass any required audit.
• Scalability and Flexibility
  In a hybrid IT environment, companies are able to quickly scale up or back according to demands. Colocation services allow providers to offer a range of options from a half cabinet of equipment at a warehouse to multiple infrastructures dispersed across continents to a full cloud environment — architected with the flexibility to make changes to the infrastructure as needed.
• Focus on Core Business Objectives and Boost Revenue
  When IT is not at the core of what you do, meeting the demands of business can be difficult — but modernizing your infrastructure has a direct impact on your bottom line. Adopting hybrid IT is one way to reduce the overhead of maintaining your systems and improve operations. Daily IT tasks such as backups, patching systems, and performance tuning can be outsourced to free up the internal IT team to focus on mission critical projects that can boost revenue.
• Reduce the IT Learning Curve
  It’s difficult to adopt new processes and technologies when an IT organization’s primary goal is to keep current operations running efficiently. Upgrading and learning new technologies is time-consuming. So when companies only refresh their hardware every three to five years and redesign their infrastructure every five to seven years, the learning curve is steep. With the expertise gained from working with many different technologies, third-party solution providers can help immensely during these transition periods and free the internal IT department to focus on ongoing projects.
• Reduce Overhead Costs
  The capital costs of maintaining your own hardware and software add up quickly. You are paying for systems you need “just-in-case,” and you need additional staff to maintain the infrastructure. Hybrid IT solutions offer the opportunity to reduce overhead expenses with costs are that are calculated based on actual volume of use.

It is unlikely that one single solution will solve your business challenges.  OneNeck IT Solutions understands you will need several solutions seamlessly working together — whether it is a public cloud, on-premises cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud. OneNeck performs a thorough assessment to understand your business and IT environment and recommends a solution to implement your applications on the right platform with an emphasis on control, cost efficiency, and effectiveness, now and into the future.