Rise in hybrid cloud and future trends

Forbes predicts that hybrid and on-premise cloud solutions will be one of the five biggest cloud computing trends for 2021, forecasted to grow in popularity. Hybrid cloud solutions work by combining private cloud with one or more public services, giving customers the ability to scale as their business model changes. Therefore, a one size fits all approach is now rendered obsolete.

Remote working is here to stay. Almost overnight, accessibility and ultra-fast connectivity of IT systems and applications became more important than ownership. Research by Cloud Industry Forum illustrates how pivotal that shift was – 91% of decision-makers said cloud played an important part in their pandemic response, and 88% of organisations expect to increase their adoption of cloud services within the next 12 months. 

A cloud transformation strategy is crucial for business continuity. Bespoke cloud solutions, encompassing secure hosting or colocation, diverse connectivity and disaster recovery are agile and scalable – mitigating the risk of downtime. Uptime Instituteresearch reports that in 2020, there were a greater percentage of IT service outages costing companies over $1 Million comparative to the previous year. As digital transformation moves at pace, the key to future-proof resilience is agility. 

IP Cloud Connect’s bespoke cloud solutions solve the top challenges facing CIOs, CTOs and IT Leaders – enhanced cybersecurity, protecting sensitive data, improving cost-efficiency, expert consultancy to address the increasing skills gap, and the flexibility to scale up or down as the business requires.

Bespoke Solutions – The Best of Both Worlds 

Public cloud delivers third party services, from AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure – to lesser-known cloud providers, giving you the flexibility to choose. The speed of innovation driven by the investments of large-scale providers often sets the benchmark for public cloud services. Public cloud provides a fast and convenient way to add accessible services. Assessing pricing models, potential vendor lock-ins and the cost of moving data is advisable early on to avoid any unexpected costs.

On-premise private cloud is fully owned and operated by a provider, such as via IP Cloud Connect’s dedicated London data centre, IP House, ensuring enhanced security, especially for sensitive or critical applications, which can be offered on either shared or dedicated hardware. IP House’s partnership with Console Connect, for example, enables direct connections to +400 data centres across more than 45 different countries worldwide, as well as additional UK locations. Subsequently, IP Cloud Connect customers benefit from an expansive choice of accessible, secure, ultra-fast cloud services to ensure resilient remote activity for businesses of all scales. 

Bespoke hybrid cloud solutions combine the best aspects of public and private cloud, for example, when a customer has the choice to host their storage and application servers on-premise, whilst email is hosted with a public cloud provider. Hybrid cloud can provide enhanced cybersecurity for critical applications and protect sensitive applications that cannot be move, for example, legacy databases. 

According to The State of the Cloud Security 2020, a global survey by Sophos – 70% of organisations experienced a public cloud security incident within the past 12 months.

A Consultative Approach for Cloud Success

The importance of applications can vary significantly from one organisation to the next. IP Cloud Connect will work in partnership with you to understand, audit, evaluate, plan and deliver a bespoke cloud transformation strategy and roadmap. The emphasis is that each set of business requirements are unique; therefore, our consultative approach, cloud and as-a-service solutions are tailor made for each of our customers.

According to Gartner, engaging external experts can accelerate and improve your cloud adoption. “Organizations can strongly benefit from expert assistance. Such assistance reduces implementation times, raises implementation quality, lowers implementation costs as well as long-term total cost of ownership, and provides a better foundation for the organization to enhance its cloud usage in the future.” Lydia Leong – Distinguished VP Analyst. 

Experienced specialists that can bring all of your clouds together, as an example; email (cloud A), website (cloud B), CRM (cloud C) together with a process of streamlining subscriptions (e.g., where employees have left) delivering a bespoke hybrid solution which will improve the efficiency of your IT environment and cost optimisation. 

Based on the type of applications, numbers of users and as-a-service requirements, cloud specialists working on your behalf can achieve the optimal bespoke solution. The combination of technical knowledge and trusted partnerships can yield significant cost and efficiency savings through economies of scale and purchasing agreements. A team dedicated to increasing your connectivity, bandwidth, quality of service and uptime ultimately empowers you to deliver a high-performance customer and employee experience.

Bespoke clouds can be custom built to scale, with enhanced security – right-sized end-user performance, flexible CPU and hardware utilisation, reducing excessive resource commitment whilst improving energy, operational and capital efficiency. The caveat is the expertise of the provider configuring your cloud solution and where your data is being housed. 

Achieving Seamless Cloud Transformation

IP Cloud Connect cloud solutions can be deployed within 24 hours – delivering access-anywhere solutions, built on a foundation of diverse, ultra-fast connectivity to protect your business with resilience and critical disaster recovery services. 

As IP Cloud Connect owns and operates every aspect of our end-to-end bespoke cloud services, customers can choose to have their data co-hosted in our secure London E14 datacentre, within their own private suite with the added option of dedicated servers. The Confidential Computing Consortium cites security is only as strong as the layers beneath it, so where extra security is required – dedicated hardware can reduce exposure to potential compromise, optimising security.



A key pain point for CIOs, CTOs and IT Leaders is establishing a comprehensive cloud transformation strategy. It is essential to understand existing issues and identify future state requirements specifically to suit your requirements, engaging stakeholders, defining a clear strategy and road mapping a path to success. Download our new 2021 eBook which provides guidance on how to Accelerate Your Cloud Transformation.