Whether it’s public, private, or hybrid, the cloud is fast becoming a core element of an organization’s information technology operations. In fact, according to leading global market intelligence firm IDC, the cloud computing spending is expected to grow six times the rate of IT spending through 2020. Given the scalability, mobility, flexibility, and cost-saving benefits of the cloud, many organizations and IT departments feel pressure to migrate 100% to the cloud.
To help enterprises and managed service providers (MSPs) simplify cloud adoption and master the challenge of managing hybrid and multi-cloud environments, HyperGrid, a California-based intelligent cloud platform vendor, offers a powerful solution for cloud cost management, performance optimization, and detailed analytics and reporting, and more.
SourceForge had the opportunity to speak with Manoj Nair, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder at HyperGrid, to discuss the benefits of employing a multi-cloud architecture and Cloud. Smarter™ strategy. Nair also offers his insights on the future of the cloud management industry and shares how HyperGrid’s HyperCloud empowers IT and DevOps by accelerating cloud decisions, enforcing governance and security, and managing costs, all in a single platform.
Q: Can you give me a brief overview of your company (year founded, size, solutions, industries you serve, etc.)?
Manoj Nair, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder at HyperGrid
A: HyperGrid was founded in 2016 and currently has 75 employees working from its headquarters in San Jose, California, and at offices in the UK and India. HyperGrid helps businesses and MSPs Cloud Smarter with the industry’s first truly intelligent cloud management (ICM) solution. The HyperCloud™ Intelligent Cloud Platform delivers end-to-end visibility, control, and automation, powered by a predictive analytics engine with over 400 million benchmarked data points. This innovative model enables organizations to plan, migrate, optimize, manage, and scale their cloud operations. HyperCloud provides powerful capabilities for cloud cost management, performance optimization, and detailed analytics and reporting, along with security and governance. With HyperCloud, organizations can accelerate cloud decisions, reduce costs, deploy secured workloads, and automate IT and DevOps across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, all in one platform.
Q: According to IDC, more than 85% of enterprise IT organizations will commit to a multi-cloud architecture by 2018. How can enterprises enjoy a successful and pain-free transition to multi-cloud?
A: I’m sure you can believe that in our line of business we get asked this question a lot! Adopting and transitioning to a multi-cloud architecture can be quite the undertaking for most businesses because many either don’t have the resources or are impacted by the IT talent shortage that has been well-documented. This is one of the factors driving 45 percent of enterprises adopting cloud to prefer their connection to public clouds be through an MSP, which we recommend to everyone we speak with. We believe the combination of an MSP with expertise, and technology to manage multi-cloud architectures, can take away the pain. Beyond considering partnering with an MSP, pain-free cloud transition comes down to proper planning and ensuring you understand your application requirements and each cloud’s features and capabilities. Hiring a team or consultants that have been there before can be invaluable.
Q: At the same time, what challenges do organizations need to be aware and prepare for when embracing a multi-cloud architecture?
A: A variety of challenges can crop up when transitioning to a multi-cloud architecture. First and foremost, managing cloud costs can be challenging because the clouds are constantly evolving. Customers can have a hard time understanding what they are paying for and that results in large inefficacies. Migration is another big challenge we see customers face. For most, it is a painful and manual process. Customers need an automated process that is quicker and more effective.
Businesses that embrace solutions like HyperCloud will instantly elevate their team’s cloud expertise and do so without the need for extensive re-training or hiring of specialists in each cloud, which can quickly get expensive. This is made possible because HyperCloud becomes your new centralized interface for everything. The process for managing and terminology used spans across all cloud environments so teams just need to become proficient in one platform
Q: Can you please tell our readers more about what it means to Cloud Smarter?
A: Our goal since day one has been to help businesses simplify and get more benefit from each stage of their cloud adoption. And we are dedicated to helping customers embark on their cloud journey armed with a solution that is intelligent and delivers automation and a broad set of capabilities that simplifies application and cloud management. Our real-time intelligence comes from analysis of over 400M+ benchmarked data-points across the many different clouds that we support. We truly believe that arming customers with this will allow them to plan, migrate and optimize their hybrid cloud environments smarter.
Q: How does HyperCloud stand out over other similar solutions in the market?
A: HyperCloud intelligent cloud management platform is designed to bring the power of machine learning and analytics to deliver vastly superior cloud management based on a proactive approach to cloud planning, cost management, governance, security, and compliance that brings a lot of transparency to cloud operations while eliminating guesswork. Using analytics and automation, HyperCloud substitutes manual, complex, and error-prone processes that often impede or derail cloud adoption and operational scaling with simple setup and workflows that require just a few clicks to get actionable insights.
Q: Since launching the Cloud Smarter strategy, what feedback have you received from your customers so far? Can you elaborate on the capabilities that were announced earlier this quarter as part of HyperCloud 6.0?
A: Customer feedback has been great. On the enterprise side, customers have reported back significant time and cloud cost savings from their cloud deployments, as well as the ability to get more out of their teams and reduce pressure associated with the constant fight for top IT talent, which many experience today. On the MSP side of the customer base, we are seeing tremendous adoption. Many organizations start with using HyperCloud to address their own digital transformation needs and then turn their sights on how they can leverage HyperCloud as a foundation for building and offering their own cloud services to their customers, helping them move beyond traditional hardware sales into subscription-based services.
We are excited about our HyperCloud 6.0 release and its various new features that will help customers Cloud. Smarter. Our new capabilities include support for AWS Lambda, enhanced automation with cloud-native tools, DR Planning, Advanced Compliance Analysis, and Azure RI Management. You can read more about it on our product announcement.
Q: Where do you see the cloud management industry going in the future? What emerging trends or technologies do you think will affect and shape the industry?
A: We continue to see the cloud adoptions rise and exceed industry expectations. At the same time, we believe that the true potential of the cloud has yet to be fully realized. We also believe that most business will end up pursuing a hybrid cloud strategy as they gain more visibility and understanding into their application requirements and different clouds’ strengths and weaknesses. As we look ahead to the rest of 2019, we see some exciting trends impacting the space as outlined on our blog, including AI taking a greater hold in the cloud and businesses continuing to transition to the cloud while spending less on new data center development, among others.
About HyperGrid
HyperGrid is a leading intelligent cloud platform vendor that provides powerful capabilities for cloud cost management, detailed analytics and reporting, performance optimization, and solid security and governance. Backed by noted venture capital firms, HyperGrid has earned various industry recognitions, including CRN Top 10 Hottest Cloud Computing Startup 2018, Forrester Wave Report Hybrid Cloud Management 2018, CRN Datacenter 100 2018; SVC Cloud Management of the Year 2017, and Best of VMworld Finalist 2017.