Cloud services like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are robust tools for business success. They have evolved far beyond the obstacles and limitations of the past. In 2017 alone, the cloud grew by almost 40% - a phenomenal growth rate for any technology. By 2020, 60% of IT infrastructure and 70% of software and IT services spending will be in the cloud.

When deployed effectively, the public cloud is a powerful and disruptive model. It brings positive operational transformation and greater competitiveness. But poor implementation is equally disruptive.

Cloud computing is proliferating and taking over the world of IT as we know it. Cloud computing also grows more complex and multi‐faceted daily. Organizations can create their own private cloud infrastructures in‐house, sign up for services from public cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure, or create hybrid environments. Other vital choices come close behind. Architects and engineers must deal with an array of connections, integrations, portability issues among clouds, resource options, orchestration, storage, and more. And somehow it must all be managed and maintained.

You can probably see why a carefully thought‐out and detailed approach to cloud computing — a strategy, in other words — is so important.

Choosing how to build a hybrid cloud is perhaps the most strategic decision IT leaders will make this decade. It is a choice that will determine their organization’s competitiveness, flexibility, and IT economics for the next 10 years.

Public clouds have set the benchmark for on-demand access to resources. But most organizations that use public clouds do so in concert with a variety of on-premise computing resources, albeit modernized and increasingly operated in a manner that provides self-service, dynamic scaling, and policy-based automation. Heterogeneous environments, both public and private, are today’s face of hybrid cloud.

To successfully streamline and automate application delivery, businesses need effective technology and an effective framework. Red Hat® Consulting partners with enterprise organizations to create a strategic approach to app delivery and provide guidance on making operations more repeatable, predictable, and scalable. Using Red Hat Ansible Automation, Red Hat subject matter experts help businesses automate and streamline complicated workflows by speeding processes and eliminating human error. After establishing this foundation, Red Hat consultants show your teams how to manage workflows across multiple infrastructures to help you focus on delivering value to their business.

Red Hat Open Innovation Labs is an immersive teaming residency that arms customers with the skills, tools, and processes to deliver better software, more quickly, to meet the demands of today’s market. Whether it’s co-creating a disruptive product, accelerating cultural transformation in the enterprise, or discovering what’s possible with a suite of proven and open tools and methods-Open Innovation Labs is designed to jump-start organizations’ most innovative ideas. Learn more.