Does Hybrid Cloud Provide Organizations With a Competitive Advantage?

A new IBM (IBM) study of 500 hybrid cloud implementers worldwide indicated the majority of organizations that currently leverage hybrid cloud said they already have gained a competitive advantage from it. 

The study, titled “Growing up Hybrid: Accelerating digital transformation,” showed 26 percent of respondents said they are gaining a competitive advantage through hybrid cloud and using it to manage their IT environment in “an integrated, comprehensive fashion for high visibility and control.”

Other study results included:

“We live in a world where companies must take advantage of all of their resources to succeed and deliver services and apps in an as a service model regardless of whether they reside in a public or private cloud or on their existing infrastructure,” Laura Sanders, IBM Global Technology Services’ general manager for systems services, said in a prepared statement. “Not surprisingly, clients are seeing great value from hybrid environments in driving business results and transformation. It’s a positive balance of optimization with flexibility and agility.” 

So why might organizations choose hybrid cloud implementations in the future?

IBM pointed out these implementations “leverage existing IT resources while integrating into public and private cloud environments … [to give] organizations greater control of their data, improved application performance and efficiencies [and] enhanced collaboration all while helping to centralize IT management.” 

As such, organizations may be able to use hybrid cloud to reduce their IT costs and become more efficient, according to IBM. 

What are your thoughts on the new IBM study? Share your thoughts about this story in the Comments section below, via Twitter @dkobialka or email me at [email protected].​