Cloud is becoming the new norm for enterprises. More and more companies across the globe are using a combination of two or more private, hosted, or public cloud services – applying different technology stacks to different business scenarios. Hybrid cloud management is now an important priority that enterprise architecture (EA) professionals should consider to support their organizations on the journey toward becoming a digital business.

I’ve recently published two reports focusing on how to manage the complexity of hybrid cloud. These reports analyze the key dimensions to consider for hybrid cloud management and present four steps to help move your firm further along the path to hybrid maturity. To unleash the power of digital business, analyze the strategic hybrid cloud management practices of visionary Chinese firms on their digital transformation journey. Some of the key takeaways:

  • Align hybrid cloud management capabilities with your level of maturity . Hybrid cloud maturity is a journey of digital transformationcovering four steps: initial acceptance, strategic adoption, hybrid operationalization, and hybrid autonomy; maturity is measured by familiarity with, experience with, and knowledge of how to operate cloud. EA pros should build their management capabilities step by step, aiming to unify and automate cloud managed services by understanding technical dependencies and business priorities.
  • Understand hybrid cloud complexity and systematically evaluate hybrid cloud management vendors. The complexity of hybrid cloud management arises from strategic decisions about the deployment model, technology stack, and integration capabilities. Hybrid cloud management is still an emerging marketto address these challenges. EA pros should comprehensively evaluate the hybrid cloud management solution providers in the market, focusing on the support of their deployment modelsamong three categories of solution providers in the market.
  • Learn from leading Chinese companies embracing digital transformation.Wasu Media established an automated operations platform to manage its hybrid infrastructure environment and enable its digital media business; China Merchants Bank isacceleratingitstransformation byproactively unifying its cloud management capabilities on both the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) layers; Suning adopted mainstream open source software on both the IaaS and PaaS layers to enable its digital operations; andYihaodian successfully accelerated its eCommerce business by automating hybrid cloud operations.

How do you manage hybrid clouds? What maturity level has your company reached? It’s time to put hybrid cloud management on your agenda if it’s not there already.