In a hybrid world, in which any combination of cloud services may be consumed by a single customer, rigid definitions of cloud deployment models may serve to hinder rather than promote innovation, Claranet warns today.

Michel Robert, Claranet’s UK managing director, says:

Definitions such as PaaS or IaaS have been useful in a rapidly evolving market in differentiating between cloud services and the attributes of each. However, the reality is customer requirements tend to be best addressed by combining different elements of these services together. The result is that while many organisations want a to take advantage of cloud services, the categories of cloud can create a false sense of inflexibility and confusion as to the best way forward.

“IaaS and PaaS as stand alone services may not be suitable, particularly for the mid-market, where many customers are looking for managed services to remove the burden of application and infrastructure management. In many cases, it will be a mix of services which will be required – satisfying their need for both control and ease of management” he continued.

Robert went on to suggest that with the predicted hybridisation of the cloud industry, deployment terms will become increasingly unhelpful, and that businesses would need to take a more holistic view of their IT requirements:

“The relevance of these discrete terms is diminishing. Analysts and technology firms are predicting a hybrid world, mixing on-premise IT with off, mixing dedicated with shared hosting, and mixing public and private cloud.

“The new realities of cloud adoption mean that businesses need help in making the move to cloud and plotting their migration paths. MSPs should be looking to leverage the range of cloud services as components of a service rather than the service itself. In doing so, there will be greater innovation and customer requirements will be better served,” Robert concluded.

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