By Gokul Bhagabati

Mumbai, Oct 25 (IANS): With more and more organisations now embarking on a digital transformation journey, the debate between adopting private and public Cloud is redundant as the way forward is going hybrid, technology leaders have said.

A hybrid Cloud infrastructure allows organisations to have control over data, while having them in public Cloud platform, said Vikas Arora, Country Manager, Cloud Business, IBM India/South Asia.

A hybrid Cloud is a computing environment which combines a public Cloud and a private Cloud by allowing data and applications to be shared between them, according to Microsoft.

Organisations should move towards adopting hybrid Cloud as the debate between private and public Cloud has been put to rest, Arora said at an event organised by Cloud infrastructure and business mobility major VMware.

Starting with the entertainment sector, now retail, banking and even government institutions are moving their data to different Cloud platforms, Vikram K, Senior Director, Data Center and Hybrid Cloud, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) India, told the gathering of tech honchos at the ongoing vForum 2017.

"But the whole thing will be hybrid in the future," he added.

In India, however, the demand currently is mostly for private Cloud," Arun Kumar, Managing Director, VMware India, told IANS on the sidelines of the event.

"About 90 per cent of our customers want private Cloud," Kumar said.

"It also depends on the verticals you are working with. Regulated sectors like banking, telecom and governmental institutions want private Cloud as they can't have their data on public Cloud," Kumar explained.

The software services provided by VMware and its partnerships with multiple players in the Cloud infrastructure segment, including Amazon, allow organisations to enjoy the benefits of hybrid Cloud, Kumar added.

Hybrid cloud services from VMware are built on the foundation of vSphere, a leading virtualisation platform. Its NSX Cloud delivers consistent networking and security for Cloud-native applications.

What really matters for organisations is to have a multi-Cloud strategy, and manage and secure them in a consistent way, said Raghu Raghuram, Chief Operating Officer, Products and Cloud Services, VMware.

However, for most organisations the world over, the digital transformation journey begins with getting ready for public Cloud, and to have that one needs to set up private Cloud infrastructure, Raghuram said.

Another important step is to categorise your applications - determining which applications need to be moved to the Cloud, Raghuram added.

"Whether you are using private Cloud, public Cloud or hybrid, the important thing is to manage these in a consistent way," Raghuram said.

"The reality is it is a multi-Cloud world and our strategy is focused not on running on Clouds, but helping customers thrive regardless of whichever Cloud they are in," he added.

Starting with the US, VMware has started making VMware Cloud available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to expand its hybrid Cloud strategy.

VMware Cloud on AWS is an on-demand service that enables one to run applications across vSphere-based cloud environments with access to a broad range of AWS services.