Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - An update from Hitachi Vantara

Cloud technology is evolving quickly. As businesses rush to unlock its benefits, the journey to the cloud is increasingly complex and no longer one-size-fits-all.

That was the key message from Adrian Johnson, Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific at Hitachi Vantara, who spoke as part of the Ultimate Guide to Cloud series, sharing insights into how organisations are navigating their cloud journeys - and how providers are changing to meet their needs.

"Customers are on a cloud journey whether it's cloud first, hybrid cloud, or even some who are staying on on-premises managed private cloud," Johnson said. "Ultimately our message is all of that's really underpinned by infrastructure."

For decades, Hitachi Vantara has been known for its highly reliable and scalable storage and data management platforms. But Johnson was eager to point out the company's significant evolution to meet new challenges.

"I think what's surprising for many people around Hitachi Vantara, given our very strong storage background, is that we've evolved our portfolio to help customers really build out that modern hybrid cloud environment," he explained, highlighting how new offerings now range from hyper-converged systems developed in partnership with VMware to flexible cloud storage options. "All backed by very flexible ownership models."

The overriding message was for companies to retain flexibility. "Retain flexibility, give yourself the option to be able to deploy your workload or your data wherever you need to, and remain in control," Johnson said.

Johnson spoke about the real-world complications companies are now facing. "Most customers have found themselves with multi-clouds," he noted. "Customers have at least now probably five cloud platforms that they're now managing. That really wasn't their intention when they first started out... this has evolved as customers' needs and businesses have evolved over time."

To help customers navigate this complexity, Hitachi Vantara has developed what it calls a Cloud Smart framework. "We're saying to customers, take an application and data-centric approach to thinking about cloud," Johnson said. "Our Cloud Smart framework is really about assessing your application needs, your data needs, your workload needs, and then really aligning those to the business - what objective are you trying to deliver to your customer, or what service are you trying to deliver?"

He argued that with a methodical approach, organisations can identify the "best location to run that workload, to manage that data, to meet your requirements."

Flexibility remained a key theme, especially as businesses seek to optimise for both present and future needs, and for budget. "Being in a position where you can manage within your budget without finding yourself kind of locked down to one particular path - so Cloud Smart's really about enabling customers to work through a process to make sure that they end up with a cloud strategy that really does meet their needs, not just now, but gives them maximum flexibility for the future."

From a technical perspective, Johnson emphasised neutrality. "We're cloud agnostic," he insisted. "We don't prescribe to a customer where they go run their workload. Part of the cloud smart framework is going through a very objective way of determining where's the best place to go run that workload and to manage that data."

This ability to support data and workloads in a variety of locations - from the major global public cloud vendors to sovereign, regionally hosted clouds - is a crucial element of Hitachi Vantara's approach. "We're not prescriptive around where customers should place that data, so that gives us really the ability to be completely objective," he said.

Johnson went into detail on how Hitachi Vantara achieves this: "For us, it starts with a common software and data management platform. We integrate data protection across our entire portfolio and that's across all data types – so it doesn't matter whether it's general data, whether it's mission critical data, whether it's object or AI data – we really do look across the entire data plane of our customers to help manage that."

"We manage all data and applications regardless of location. Our technology enables customers to build out that true hybrid environment which says it doesn't matter whether it's at the edge, whether it's in your own datacentre, or whether it's in a public cloud or managed private cloud, we're going to give you the right technology stack to manage that regardless of location," he added.

Technology partnerships play a significant role. "All of our solutions include software-defined, we have hyper-converged infrastructure solutions that we engineer in partnership with VMware," Johnson revealed. "That relationship enables us to utilise their VCF Suite, which enables customers then to manage their application regardless of where that infrastructure is being run - whether it's on-prem or in public cloud - again providing customers with the maximum flexibility of how they manage their environment."

Ownership models are flexible as well, including as-a-service, capital expenditure, and operational expenditure models through Hitachi Vantara's innovative EverFlex offering.

"The tools, the technology and the ownership models to build out a hybrid cloud environment that enables them to scale into the future," Johnson explained.

Asked about trends and where customers are focusing, Johnson was unequivocal. "Hybrid cloud is clearly the trend we're seeing customers talking about right now and really it's going to be their next generation infrastructure model," he said.

He observed that binary debates of 'on-premise vs public cloud' are being replaced by a desire for blended, flexible infrastructure. "Hybrid cloud is enabling customers to have The Best of Both Worlds... reports at the moment are saying anywhere between 80 to 90% of customers are saying their future workloads will be hybrid."

Other drivers include a growing awareness of data sovereignty. "Data that really should not go offshore - starting to understand what jurisdiction and what legal framework that data is being subject to," he said. Organisations are increasingly keen on hybrid environments that include sovereign clouds, ensuring data remains protected within relevant legal jurisdictions.

"I think we're seeing customers become far more knowledgeable and far more nuanced around how they think about their data and workload requirements and that's really driving that hybrid cloud shift," Johnson concluded.

The cloud journey, it seems, is just getting started. As Johnson put it: "We'd be very happy to talk to customers about their cloud journey and how we might be able to assist."