Not so long ago, I came across a press release from Gartner , the analyst firm, which quoted one of its vice presidents saying:
“IT organizations that do not match the request for IT as a service run the risk of internal customers bypassing the IT organization and consuming IT services from the external cloud, thereby placing the company at greater risk.”
It turns out that the analysts at Gartner see a world of hybrid IT architectures. Their view is that IT organizations are becoming brokers of IT services, some of which are hosted internally, some of which reside in externally hosted Clouds.
As the intermediary of IT services, IT organizations can exploit external Cloud pricing, capacity, and speed-of-provisioning while maintaining required security and governance — and reducing IT service costs.
“Hybrid IT is the new IT and it is here to stay,” Gartner’s analyst says. “IT organizations must adopt a hybrid IT strategy that not only builds internal clouds to house critical IT services … but also utilizes the external cloud to house noncritical IT services and data, augment internal capacity, and increase IT agility. Hybrid IT creates symmetry between internal and external IT services that will force an IT and business paradigm shift for years to come.”
In my next blog, I’ll explore why I believe Gartner has it right.
