CEO Emil Sayegh’s CloudEXPO Keynote Presentation: The Great Correction: Why Are Some Enterprises Fleeing the Public Cloud?

On June 24th, Ntirety CEO Emil Sayegh was a keynote speaker at the 23rd International CloudEXPO conference in Silicon Valley. As a follow-up to his session at the New York CloudEXPO conference in Novemeber 2018, Sayegh shared expert insights in his presentation “The Great Correction: Why Are Some Enterprises Fleeing the Public Cloud?” to the large crowd of IT professionals at the Santa Clara Convention Center in the heart of Silicon Valley. Focusing on the issues enterprise organizations face in the public cloud that are driving them to explore new options, his presentation shed light on a new massive trend towards the “hybrid” cloud.

While the public cloud has many strengths such as scalability, speed, and relative ease to spin up, Sayegh explained how those benefits also come with major and often surprising challenges. The promise that migrating would solve issues with legacy systems is all too often unrealized when problems simply shift and manifest into new even bigger challenges.

To illustrate this darker side of public cloud for enterprises – such as escalating costs, security concerns, and compliance limitations — Sayegh shared these concerning stats:

• 45% of public cloud spend is wasted, reported in Rightscale’s State of the Cloud
• 66% of IT professionals say security is their greatest concern, when asked about adopting an enterprise cloud computing platform
• Only 12% of global IT organizations understand how GDPR will affect their cloud services

With grave statistics such as these, it is understandable why the heightened expectations of the public cloud are, falling short on business outcomes. But exiting this solution opens the door to confusion: where to go next — private cloud, colocation, hybrid cloud, or even back to traditional infrastructures.

To help audiences understand all options, Sayegh presented a pertinent analogy to explain the pros and cons of primary cloud options. Using familiar structures like hotels, private homes, rental properties, and apartment complexes, he described how each represents an IT solution. Each building provides benefits and challenges depending on individual needs.

• The Hotel – Perfect for those needing multiple rooms at a variety of times, without any cost of physical ownership. That’s the public cloud.
• The Apartment/Condo Complex – You are a resident, but maintenance and upkeep are provided by the building’s super. This is managed cloud – private and public.
• Rental Property – The entire property is yours to occupy, but you still don’t own it – That is colocation.
• The Private Home – The owner has complete control and upkeep responsibilities. You guessed it, on premise and private, self-managed IT.

While the most appropriate option is unique for each organization, Sayegh emphasized the growing trend toward the hybrid cloud. Blending public cloud, private cloud, and dedicated or on-prem solutions, the custom hybrid cloud approach meets enterprise needs and concerns around cost issues, security risks, and compliance limitations. With mounting issues and risks surrounding the sole use of the public cloud, it is little wonder why the hybrid cloud is considered the “new normal”.

“Word to the wise here, this is where the trend is and this is where all of IT infrastructure is going to go,” Sayegh shares. “Hybrid and multi-cloud is the future because it combines the best of both worlds.”

With insights, analogies, and invaluable advice, Sayegh’s keynote drilled into the reasons for the exit from the public cloud and brought hope through the adoption of the hybrid cloud approach. A thought-leader in the industry, Ntirety’s CEO was honored to share the forward-thinking concepts and strategies that keep enterprise businesses ahead of the market.