Georges Jabra

Managed Services Director

Ascent Data

Pittsburgh 

This is a funny story, because the buzzword from 2015 to 2019 was cloud, cloud, cloud. But then in 2019 at NexGen, the buzzword was “de-clouding.” But after that, I think companies realized, ‘Yes, there’s some stuff that we’re doing that wouldn’t be able to run 100 percent from the cloud, and some applications we can.’ So, we’re [seeing] companies understanding what can run from the cloud and what needs to be on-site. [For] a lot of clients, we have pushed them to be 100 percent [cloud] because they don’t have applications that can’t run [in the cloud]. But for some clients, we push them to have hybrid cloud for applications and the stuff that can’t be in the cloud. … [For example,] we have a lot of manufacturing clients. But they’re running applications from 1990. And to replace those applications, it’s a gazillion dollars. [Some have] tried to push some of those applications to the cloud—it just didn’t work.

Scott Gossett

President

Clutch Solutions

Gilbert, Ariz.

A hybrid cloud approach is what we’re seeing. Definitely our customers are looking for some things in the cloud, but they realized that the public cloud can be very expensive to retrieve data and to bring it back in.

So, they also definitely are migrating [into the cloud] by having their own private cloud. Sometimes, there’s regulations where they can’t have things in the public cloud. I would say the majority of our customers are doing hybrid cloud.