When to Migrate Workloads in a Hybrid IT Environment

By now, you probably don’t need to be convinced of the benefits of hybrid IT architectures. 58% of enterprises are already using a hybrid strategy. Flexibility and security with data capture, creation and processing is critical. However, how and when you migrate your data from private to public environments, or vice versa, can be a bit more complicated.

Just as all things with mass or energy experience a gravitational pull toward one another, data also experiences a gravitational pull. The larger data sets become, the more difficult they are to move since applications and data are attracted to each other. The notion of data gravity was first introduced a decade ago but we’re now face-to-face with its impact. It’s increasingly more challenging for IT to accommodate global workflows and break through the barriers with moving data from point A to point B. Achieving a mix of on-prem and cloud workloads will help solve for these data gravity challenges and promote more seamless operations. The future we envision is one where data can move freely between on-prem, private cloud, public cloud, and the edge and every business of any size can access their data and applications 24/7/365 no matter where in the world it lives.

One size does not fit all workloads

A major driver behind the shift towards hybrid environments is the notion that not everything belongs in the cloud nor in a traditional deployment. You must strategically identify which data should be kept on-premises, whether it’s highly confidential or will remain relatively stable, and what data should be migrated to the public cloud such as workloads that are variable in nature. Hybrid architectures ultimately allow companies to enable a more flexible architecture to adapt on the fly to fluctuating and complex demands.

What data should be migrated?

Not all data belongs in the cloud. Understand the nature of your data sets to identify which types of workloads would be the best candidates for migration based on the results you are hoping to achieve. For more information, hear from cloud migration expert, Okey Keke, on the types of workloads that are good candidates for migration.