By Scott KoeglerCloud-based systems have grown in size and scope, and are increasingly important to enterprises as they grow their presence and their use of data. For companies that already have significant internal technology infrastructure in place, the lure of cloud computing platforms presents the promise of on-demand expansion and service deployment at the same time their existing systems support current operations. With all that said, the cloud pendulum seems to be shifting as companies figure out what does—and doesn’t—work in the cloud.“As more companies with legacy applications want to try cloud technologies, cloud computing is headed from just a pure public cloud--à la AWS [Amazon Web Services]--to a hybrid cloud combining traditional computing and storage infrastructure, together with the ability to spin up cloud instances,” said Emil Savegh, CEO and president of Codero Hosting. “Companies using AWS are starting to feel the limitations of an ‘only public cloud’ strategy. They are feeling it in their pocketbook and budget, and in performance and flexibility.”One of the biggest issues CIOs are facing is that no one knows what the biggest issues—and technologies—will be moving forward, even in the relatively near term. In this digital economy, in which change is increasingly driven by customers, companies must be able to quickly adapt or they will almost surely die.“The world of IT is changing at an ever-increasing pace,” said Savegh. “No one can tell in detail what the next big technologies will be, what they will be called or how they will exactly work.”Despite all the uncertainty about the future, businesses can count on the fact that data and the need for large-scale storage will be major drivers for business and the technology that enables it—with mobile overarching everything.“The mobile explosion will continue--there will be more mobile users than ever before, and BYOD [bring your own device] and the Web applications that have come along with these trends will continue,” noted Sayegh. “When looking to build for the future, CIOs need to understand that there will be a lot more devices everywhere. To plan for the future, CIOs need to think about infrastructure that accommodates scale, flexibility and ubiquitous access. It’s a simple formula with many underlying complex components.”Sayegh said that while we hear about “the cloud” all the time, few realize it is the key to building IT for the future.“Clearly, traditional infrastructure can’t handle it because it cannot scale,” he said. “Cloud alone can’t do it, as the virtualization layer introduces latency and performance issues when faced with large data sets.”Companies experiencing or anticipating high growth, or those expanding their global footprint and needing to support highly distributed operations, are already looking at hybrid environments that offer both internal stability and external expansion. The deployment of hybrid cloud infrastructures offer options that support these kinds of plans.“It is the bridge between the performance and control of dedicated infrastructure and the flexibility and benefits of the cloud that we know,” he said. “This is where CIOs need to focus for the next two years.”This content is underwritten by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).