Hybrid and multi-cloud are the new norm for digital transformation. Most chief digital officers and CIOs are already deep into their cloud transformation journey as they work through a long-term digital transformation strategy.

Because cloud is everywhere, it makes sense to adopt a hybrid-cloud strategy that supports delivery of a cloud-like experience both on premises and off premises.

Why are so many organizations adopting a hybrid-cloud strategy? A hybrid-cloud approach provides choice and flexibility.

At Citrix, we’ve seen customers move between on premises and off premises for better end-user experience, improved response time, higher app availability and scalability, better cost, and compliance. Take Microsoft Azure and Azure Stack for example. They create a consistent hybrid-cloud solution for enterprises so users have the same experience on premises and off premises.

What About Multi-Cloud?

So, if hybrid is the way forward, what about multi-cloud? It co-exists with hybrid cloud and helps shape the digital transformation footprint for enterprises. Today there are more than five key public cloud infrastructure providers. While they promise to do everything, each have their own specialties. There are several reasons why an enterprise would mandate a multi-cloud solution such as:

  • Access best of breed technologies
  • Avoid lock-in
  • Ensure deployment flexibility
  • Local data store for compliance
  • Performance with local infrastructure
  • Disaster recovery across cloud
  • Reliability and attack protection
  • Cost advantage and lower TCO

Multi-cloud offers choice with public cloud vendors like AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, IBM, and more. Similarly, it stands true for private cloud vendors like Azure Stack, VMware, OpenStack etc. and in the same way for automation frameworks like Ansible and Terraform. Customers want flexibility and choice across on premises and off premises, and hybrid and multi-cloud are two facets of same coin, working together to deliver a seamless experience for enterprise success.

With the benefits of multi-cloud, organizations also experience a new set of challenges such as complexity, security, performance, visibility, automation, migration, manageability, and the need for new IT and administration skills. Despite these challenges, the benefits outweigh the concerns.

Enabling Innovation and Agility

The aim of digital transformation is to enable innovation and agility. In the future, cloud will be a combination of heterogenous infrastructures and technologies. Almost every enterprise will need to live in a hybrid-cloud world within a multi-cloud setup.

At Citrix, we develop technologies that help CIOs and CDOs succeed with their digital transformation goals. Our virtualization and networking solutions empower customers with seamless and highly productive ways to run Citrix’s technology stack in a hybrid and multi-cloud environment. As a pioneer of software-driven application delivery technologies, we empower customers to embrace a true hybrid and multi-cloud future.

Check out the reference architecture below, which explains how we enable seamless application delivery from both a hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure. And keep an eye out for our next post on the benefits of Citrix technology in a hybrid and multi-cloud application delivery architecture!