Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2017.  Read them in this 9th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by Yoel Knoll, VP of Marketing, TopSpin Security

The Growth of the Hybrid Cloud

Until recently, the hybrid cloud has been hampered by lack of tools to make connection, security and management across the public-private cloud divide robust, fast, and easy. But in 2017, this situation will change radically. Private cloud advances such as OpenStack and Microsoft's Azure Stack and myriad other tools, infrastructures, and architectures are poised to support the hybrid cloud and make it the preferred option for many applications.

Hybrid cloud is particularly valuable for dynamic workloads. An order entry system that experiences significant demand spikes at the holiday season is an excellent hybrid cloud candidate. The transactional application runs most of the year in the private cloud (on-premise), but employs cloud bursting to quickly obtain additional computing resources from a public cloud as transaction volumes spike, such as on Cyber Monday, for example.

On the data security side, hybrid cloud scenarios cater to the needs of IT departments who are reluctant to expose much of their infrastructure to public cloud providers. They fear compromises on security that arrive by opening up another door to the outside where they don't control the use or storage of their precious data. With a hybrid cloud infrastructure, enterprises will be able to experience an environment where they can gain the flexibility, attractive cost structure and processing power of a cloud provider - but where they also keep their data on their own premises. This will give rise to new tools such as advanced traffic analysis and intelligent deception technologies which will emerge in 2017 to help secure enterprises' private data in hybrid and public clouds, just like they are doing on-premise today.

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About the Author

Yoel Knoll brings over 15 years of international experience in Marketing and Investor Relations. He joins TopSpin from Secure Islands Technologies (acquired by Microsoft) where he built and managed the company's marketing department. Prior to that, Yoel held managerial positions in several publicly traded companies including VP Corp. Marketing and Investor Relations at Ceragon Networks (NASDAQ: CRNT), Media Relations Manager at Infineon Technologies (FSE: IFX) COM group (now part of Intel), and Product Marketing at Infineon Technologies SAVAN.