Vicky Glynn, product manager at colocation and cloud solutions provider, Brightsolid, believes that 2020 will be a defining year for the hybrid cloud in Scotland, with both start-ups and large corporations set to embrace the technology. Here she explains why she came to that conclusion.
If there’s one thing we can agree, it’s that cloud computing has become a major consideration for businesses over the last decade. However, as we approach a new year, I believe that 2020 will be the year in which Scottish companies – from start-ups to large corporations – will fully embrace the hybrid cloud. This will happen as organisations progressively realise the benefits they can gain across cost, efficiency and flexibility.
It’s vital that the needs of the organisations are enabled by cloud, those needs are perpetually evolving and ever-changing and increasing customer demand is driving organisations to be constantly transforming. Choosing one type of cloud, or even setting up multi-cloud environments based on current workloads, doesn’t enable organisations to be ready to address future workloads. Hybrid cloud is a much more viable strategy as it assumes a mix of on-premises, private cloud and public cloud, and ensures the ecosystem of network, security and performance management and cost optimisation in which any cloud can be supported is there, ready to respond to business demand.
While we envisage that larger organisations in Scotland working across finance, public sector and oil and gas will be the biggest winners and see the most success with hybrid environments over the next two years, organisations on the smaller end of the scale will not miss out.
Embracing hybrid technology will be pivotal to the country’s smaller businesses over the coming years as they look to the cloud to transform their business operations. The thriving technology sector in Scotland is typically made up of fast-growing SMEs, from fintech to gaming companies. The industry is flourishing, and is more than ready to compete with technology businesses based around the Silicon Roundabout or along the M4 corridor. However, growing from a start-up to a scale-up organisation requires an evolving technical environment that can respond dynamically to changing needs. I believe that for those organisations about to reach that tipping point, building a hybrid cloud environment ready for any workload, placed anywhere, will be pivotal in the next stage of their evolution.
From a broader market perspective, 2020 will also be the year that organisations will need to adapt their businesses to deal with the long-term effects of Brexit – whatever happens – and other uncertainties. In doing so, the technology that the organisation sits on must be able to provide the agility and flex that they need to adapt to whatever the business landscape may throw at them. This shift towards hybrid cloud will also impact economic growth as a whole. While budgets might prove restrictive, organisations should look within to drive this growth. We believe that this will be done in two ways – firstly through people, and encouraging talent within the organisation to innovate and secondly; through smart use of technology. For these organisations, adopting the right cloud strategy will ultimately support and enable this environment of growth.
