Cloud systems require careful planning and testing to ensure the deployment of high-perfor- ming solutions and services that achieve reduced costs and complexity, but higher efficiency, says Chinese electronics multinational Huawei Technologies Cloud Computing VP Chen Kun.

As enterprises move to the cloud, they are increasingly looking to cloud services broke- rage (CSB) to provide third-party assistance to set up and run cloud services, and shift resources to strategic activities that create business innovation and value.

However, most hybrid cloud solutions are often isolated and homogeneous, with public cloud within hybrid cloud prone to security and network instability risks. Therefore, enterprises face challenges when deploying or migrating their service applications on a hybrid cloud, he says.

The adoption of hybrid cloud has been slow in South Africa, mostly owing to the shortage of reliable infrastructure, such as energy, which impacts on communications; and sufficient high-speed fibre, which form the foundations for using hybrid cloud.

“This, together with concerns of security and migration costs, causes companies to prefer using private cloud. However, with recent developments, these concerns are being addressed with more fibre being deployed, which will enable the practical use of hybrid clouds.”

A hybrid delivery model that combines traditional information technology (IT), private cloud and public cloud is the most likely format as enterprises transition to the cloud. A hybrid cloud offers maximum asset utilisation and cost effectiveness, leverages IT security and provides high IT availability and service flexibility.

“CSB will play an increasingly important role in helping companies efficiently navigate and deploy cloud services, particularly for mission- critical applications, where the company cannot risk issues with deployment,” emphasises Chen.

The goal of CSB is to make the cloud service specific to a company, integrate or aggregate services to enhance their security or add significant layers of value through the introduction of cloud-based capabilities to the original cloud services being offered, he highlights.

The global CSB market is expected to grow from $1.6-billion in 2013 to $10.5-billion by 2018, or 46.2% a year, according to market research firm Markets and Markets.

CSB is also emerging within IT departments to deliver cloud-based services and ensure third-party compliance with enterprise security and governance policies, effective brokering will, therefore, be essential for cloud-enabled enterprises.

“Another trend that is easing the job of cloud service brokers is the increasing standardisation of services and platforms on which enterprise applications are being developed and deployed,” says Chen.

IT organisations and CSB need an open cloud platform that enables them to rapidly build, deploy and manage cloud applications in a more agile, scalable manner to deliver the ultimate customer-focused innovation.

“An effective cloud platform that can seamlessly run computing, storage and network resources from different vendors in the same data centre can help the integration and optimisation of existing data centres and service platforms, thus enhancing service system reliability and IT operating efficiency.”

Creating a healthy cloud ecosystem across the Internet industry using open, integrated and innovative technologies and through strong partnerships is the foundation of the new cloud era, concludes Chen.