One Cloud Is Not Enough – The Answer is Hybrid Multicloud

Originally published in ficolo.com in 2020.

The cloud and data center market is quite dynamic. New trends and fads come and go, just as new providers with great declarations of disruption only to soon quietly fade away with nothing to show for the promises. Every year bringing a new set of terms and dogmas.

An often stated belief is that the public cloud offers the absolute cloud computing bliss. The industry analysts can give a more nuanced picture – one which also guides our daily operations. A recent cloud industry report states that corporates are especially interested in solutions that are based on multicloud and hybrid cloud platforms.

The public cloud is still popular, but according to the report, their popularity as the one and only solution is decreasing. Their assessment is that this is because the costs tend to increase too much as business grows. Private cloud can offer a more cost-efficienct solution providing it is efficiently managed and utilization is high.

From the point of view of the business, it is important to undestand that there is no single objectively best cloud solution – no “one-cloud-fits-all” type of solution. The variety of use cases is so broad that considering only one option does not lead to effective outcomes.

Demand for multicloud, flexibility and local know-how.

The successful CIOs have changed their approach toward solutions that are tailored for their specific needs. They are designed with the customer’s business in mind and can be scaled as the business grows. In this context, speed, scalability and local know-how are vital. In many cases, hybrid multicloud solutions have central role in this.

With hybrid multicloud, different options can be kept open and nothing needs to be procured just in case. When a company needs new features to their cloud, they can be deployed with flexibility and speed. All the features of public cloud from any provider are also easily available if needed. In hybrid multicloud solutions the optimal cloud environment can be assured without the customer having to pay for anything that they do not actually need yet.

The next generation Data Centers are the winners of the future. They can mix the private and public cloud and build hybrid solutions that utilize different components at the same time. They have know-how on how to provide modern connectivity solutions and provide both digital and physical (“phygital”) security. Above all, they know how to combine customer’s different needs from lots of computing capacity to low latency.

Planning these kinds of solutions requires its own expertise. The importance of partnerships has increased – that is why cloud service providers and colocation data center providers are continuously expanding their co-operation.

The data center of the future is agile and green

The analysts who follow the industry believe in a multi-tenant hybrid multicloud future. Gartner estimates that by 2025 over 80% of companies have closed their own traditional data centers. Data centers that only offer floor space move out of the way of colocation providers who offer value adding services.

Cloud and data center services are an increasingly important part of companies’ business strategies. One of the central elements of their business strategies is a cloud solution that is built specifically to their needs and that supports their business objectives.

Along with the agile operational model, environmental changes are affecting markets. Environmental values have increasing importance when companies select cloud and data center partners. That is why Ficolo’s newest data center operates with 100% renewable energy and heat reuse. The data center was funded with a green bond, that received the highest rating of Norwegian climate research institute subsidiary Cicero as the first Finnish data center. The rating is only given to projects that help prevent climate change.

The data centers of the future work with their customers at the different stages of building their cloud services. We have helped our customers by changing their business models to cloud business models, bringing the opportunities of the cloud as a part of traditional ICT solutions and helping companies already in the cloud to achieve better results. Each customer deserves a solution that is built for their needs and such services are almost never built around just one building block.