Gartner: Prepare for hybrid cloud pain

Hybrid clouds, where businesses integrate public and private cloud applications, are almost at the top of Gartner’s eponymous hype cycle.

According to Gartner, hybrid clouds offer the best possible economic model and maximum agility for businesses wishing to balance the IT resources they use via a public cloud, with those that must be retained in a private cloud running on computers hosted within the company’s own datacentre. Gartner believes the private cloud also sets the stage for new ways for enterprises to work with suppliers and partners (B2B) and customers.

But given the hype surrounding hybrid clouds, companies are likely to experience a huge amount of pain – in terms of procurement, implementation and deployment of such IT architectures. The attitude of those implementing such systems will switch from enlightenment to one of despair, as hybrid cloud technologies ride the wave down to what Gartner calls the trough of disillusionment.

In Gartner’s hype cycle for emerging technologies, analysts David Cearley and Donna Scott noted: “Approach sophisticated integrated solutions, cloud-bursting and dynamic execution cautiously, because these are the least mature and most problematic hybrid approaches. To encourage experimentation and cost savings, and to prevent inappropriately risky implementations, create guidelines and policies on the appropriate use of the different hybrid cloud models.”