Organizations are constantly reassessing their cloud strategies to meet growing demands for resilience, compliance, and operational flexibility. While the past decade saw a massive migration to public cloud services, a significant shift is now underway. Companies are increasingly adopting hybrid cloud approaches.
But what does 'hybrid' mean here? It refers to combining public cloud resources with private infrastructure to create more robust and adaptable environments. This evolution reflects new realities: geopolitical uncertainties, regulatory requirements, and a maturing understanding of the true strategic value of different cloud models.
To better apprehend this shift, our hybrid cloud experts Roger Samdal and Kyrre Førli from Sopra Steria DPS Norway, have shared insights from their extensive experience implementing hybrid solutions, particularly in highly regulated industries.
From plan B to plan A: the strategic Pivot to Hybrid
For our experts, the motivations for hybrid cloud adoption have fundamentally changed in recent years. What began as a cost-optimization exercise has evolved into a strategic imperative.
"We've observed a significant shift over the past year," explains Roger Samdal. "Previously, the movement was about modernizing traditional on-premises infrastructure to leverage cloud innovation. However, especially in the last six months with the evolving geopolitical situation, we're seeing a move in the opposite direction. Organizations already using public clouds are now exploring hybrid solutions for greater resilience."
This reversal isn't about abandoning public cloud services but rather about creating more balanced and resilient architectures. Kyrre Førli identifies the key drivers: "When it comes to strategic value, compliance and resilience are the two primary advantages organizations gain from hybrid cloud adoption."
The approach embodies the timeless wisdom of not putting all eggs in one basket. For organizations operating in regulated environments or critical infrastructure sectors, hybrid cloud provides the diversification needed to maintain operations under any circumstances. It also offers a viable exit strategy from any single cloud provider, reducing dependency risks in an uncertain geopolitical landscape.
Mapping your hybrid journey
Implementing a hybrid cloud solution requires careful planning and a clear understanding of organizational needs. Our experts outlined a practical approach to this transition.
"The first essential step is to thoroughly understand your data and systems in a security context, particularly in relation to your country's regulations and laws," advises Førli. "You should conduct a business impact analysis to prioritize your systems based on business and resilience needs, allowing you to determine what belongs in the public cloud versus what should remain local."
This assessment creates the foundation for strategic decision-making about workload placement. High-risk or critical systems might need to remain on private infrastructure, while less sensitive workloads can leverage public cloud capabilities.
A project provides an instructive example of this process. "In our Norwegian healthcare project, they established clear parameters for their new architecture," Samdal shares. "Their primary requirement was the ability to operate independently of public cloud services during crisis situations, while still maintaining a modern, innovative environment that delivers a public cloud experience."
The case in point demonstrates how sector-specific requirements, like the need for hospitals to function autonomously during crises, can drive hybrid architecture decisions. A well-designed hybrid environment allows organizations to maintain core services even when external connections are compromised.
Breaking down the silos before building the bridges
While technical implementations receive most of the attention in cloud discussions, our experts emphasized that organizational factors often determine success or failure in hybrid cloud initiatives.
"The technology implementation is actually the easier part of hybrid cloud adoption," notes Førli. "The real challenge lies in organizational change management. This transformation is time-consuming and requires new approaches to manage both existing systems and new technologies simultaneously."
Many organizations underestimate this complexity. Teams accustomed to traditional infrastructure must adapt to new methodologies while maintaining existing systems. Meanwhile, new competencies must be developed to manage the integrated environment effectively.
Governance structures also need reconsideration. As Samdal explains, "Effective governance requires a unified cloud engineering team responsible for both the public and private components. Creating separate isolated silos is one of the first things that will lead to failure. While you need specialized expertise for each environment, they should operate under a single overarching framework."
This unified approach prevents the common pitfall of creating competing teams with misaligned objectives. Instead, organizations should foster collaboration between legacy system experts and cloud-native specialists, creating a shared vision for the hybrid environment.
The path to true hybrid
How can organizations evaluate the effectiveness of their hybrid cloud approach? Our experts identified key indicators of a successful implementation.
"In an ideal hybrid platform, you can deploy any application anywhere regardless of the underlying architecture," states Samdal. "The deployment speed and experience should be identical whether you're using the private or public portion of your infrastructure."
This seamless experience is the hallmark of a well-designed hybrid solution. Applications should move fluidly between environments without requiring significant reconfiguration, providing real flexibility and resilience.
Looking to the future, organizations should design their hybrid environments with adaptability in mind. Førli emphasizes the concept of "true hybrid" as a guiding principle: "The concept of 'true hybrid' involves implementing the same control plane across your entire platform. This creates a seamless experience where users don't need to consciously consider whether they're working with public or private resources. This unified approach is crucial for future-proofing your infrastructure."
To maintain this adaptability, organizations should minimize vendor lock-in by leveraging open-source technologies where possible and maintaining portability between environments. The application portfolio should also evolve toward more container-based, microservice-oriented architectures that can run consistently across different environments.
Clouds without borders: the future of flexible infrastructure
As organizations navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape, hybrid cloud offers a balanced approach that addresses multiple strategic objectives simultaneously.
"Ultimately, hybrid cloud offers the flexibility to address virtually any business need or challenge," concludes Samdal. "It provides organizations with the resilience to operate under any circumstances while still enabling innovation and transformation."
But as hybrid architectures mature, a new question emerges on the horizon: will sovereign cloud requirements reshape these hybrid strategies once again? As nations assert greater control over their digital infrastructure and data sovereignty becomes a regulatory priority, organizations may soon find themselves integrating not just public and private, but also sovereign elements into their cloud equation, perhaps creating what we might call a "hybrid-plus" approach for tomorrow's digital landscape.
In a world of constant change, perhaps the true lesson is that hybridization itself (the ability to blend, adapt, and evolve different approaches) has become not just a technical solution but a fundamental business and life principle for navigating uncertainty.