How do you tie together cloud and on-prem?

The hybrid cloud must be managed correctly to make the most of what it offers

The hybrid cloud is today's buzzword for utilising on-premise and cloud environments at the same time (or, sometimes, both private and public clouds); but like any service that combines multiple systems and vendors, management is difficult. What is the solution, asked Gary Jones of CA Technologies at Computing's Cloud and Infrastructure Summit?

Organisations can use hybrid cloud deployments to prioritise their workloads between modern and legacy systems; and it frees up IT operations teams from low-level fixing to focus on end-to-end service quality. However, this means that they lose visibility and control over the network. In addition, Jones said, because applications run in two locations, the end-user experience can be compromised.

Silos are a traditional way of running systems, but do not lend themselves to hybridisation. You might see traditional and dynamic tools mixed with the public and private cloud. Managing these individually is a very time-consuming, so investing in a monitoring management tool, taking a holistic view, makes sense.

Running a monitoring tool for your infrastructure requires what Jones calls an inside-out view, which detects any system issues; i.e. outages. However, just as - or more - important is an outside-in view, which determines customers' satisfaction with a product, and how they are using it. An example is CA Technologies' app dynamics tool, which CNN used during the US election. The data showed that customers were swiping left and right to move through news; but, a few months later, that increasing numbers of them were swiping down. CNN changed the app in the next update to make this a valid direction.

CA's goal is tie together the inside-out and outside-in views.