For well over a decade, businesses of all sizes have steadily placed their digital systems onto platforms run by large cloud providers. Everything from CRM and data storage to new applications and analytics have ended up on the servers of major cloud providers, which are shared between multiple businesses.
While executives often have strong expectations about saving money and ensuring elastic scalability, the realities of using public cloud services can be more complex. In many cases, businesses endure spiking costs, unexpected add-on expenses, security problems and little influence over the technology being used. A recent outage at one of the world’s largest cloud providers even saw thousands of businesses’ core email and collaboration systems go offline for several hours.
“The buzz around public cloud provision has been really big, and to some degree, that’s understandable given its scalability. But businesses rarely understand what they are actually getting into,” explains Jake Madders, co-founder and director of Hyve managed hosting.
Typically, migrations to the public cloud are kicked off by well-intentioned developers, who see its capacity to support important and growing applications without having to buy new servers. But prices are rising as the number of providers in the market dwindles. Companies also experience ‘bill shock’ when they have surges in network traffic, which can happen for reasons as diverse as a successful marketing campaign and a DDoS security attack.
There is another hidden cost. “Typically, businesses moving to the public cloud quickly find they need consultancies to help them manage the technology on a daily basis, given the complexity of choices in front of them at every stage,” Madders notes. “These consultancy costs often equal or exceed the actual cloud provision costs.”
Such challenges have prompted many businesses to rethink their approach. “There has been a strong trend towards cloud repatriation, which means pulling the data and apps out of the public cloud, and back into controlled, secure private cloud setups,” explains Madders. Private cloud gives businesses their own managed, dedicated servers, stronger security, better disaster recovery and backup options, consistent support and much more control over costs and technology choices.
“The private cloud empowers businesses in mission-critical areas, massively increasingly capabilities and effiencies”
With Hyve’s help, businesses are choosing and running powerful, cost-effective and secure private clouds that meet local needs, including low latency, data sovereignty and on-the-ground support. “Choosing servers, processing power and myriad other options is incredibly complex, particularly from a cost and performance perspective,” Madders says. “Companies come to us to help with the critical decisions so they make the most effective choices.”
Hyve also provides ongoing managed-support services, which help customers run their private clouds from day-to-day. Madders adds: “when a business needs to discuss its setup, change anything, or spin up capacity the executives know they can speak to the same experts each time, who already know them, and they won’t have to explain themselves over and over.”
Companies including Côte Brasserie, PureGym, NHS Queen Victoria Hospital and Capita have all made significant changes to their IT setups with the of Hyve. The restaurant chan Carluccio’s also partnered with Hyve to improve reliability and security across its systems as it upgraded its website, table bookings and online shop. Meanwhile, the self-storage business SafeSstore brought in Hyve to underpin the growth and reliability of its website, through which around 80% of its business is consistently derived.
Increasingly, businesses are counting on Hyve to meet multiple critical needs. The company is now active in over 35 markets worldwide and is expanding rapidly in the US and Germany. “As businesses look to retake control of their cloud infrastructure, moving away from a reliance on a single provider, they are turning to the private cloud,” Madders concludes. “Doing so empowers them in mission-critical areas – including high-performance computing and artificial intelligence – massively increasing their business capabilities and efficiencies.”
