Emil Sayegh, CEO of Hostway, a cloud and dedicated hosting provider based in Chicago, told attendees of the NexGen Cloud Conference and Expo on Wednesday that "it's not all about cloud."
Sayegh, who took the top job at the provider only a couple months ago, made the argument that hybrid infrastructure connecting clouds with on-premises networks, for most customers, is the right solution.
Hostway often hears from customers who are frustrated by overspending after a cloud migration, he said.
[Related: Lenovo Cloud Director: Open Source Technologies Are The Glue That Binds The Hybrid Cloud]
"Hybrid is frankly the best of both worlds," Sayegh told attendees of the conference in Anaheim, Calif., produced by CRN parent The Channel Company. "It gives you flexibility; it gives you more choice, also gives you the right tools for the right workload and eliminates overspending."
Cloud providers are solving real problems, from bottlenecks to scaling, "but that's not the only answer," Sayegh said. "We need a true hybrid."
Corporate IT departments struggle to find suitable environments for hosting hundreds of applications, and "each one of those applications, my friends, has requirements," Sayegh said.
Some workloads are great sitting in the cloud. Others, often those with predictable loads, like databases, typically achieve greater cost efficiencies on dedicated gear.
And the needs of companies, from startups to established enterprises, are always changing as they evolve their businesses and scale.
By interfacing one private network to a public provider, putting the application in the place it's best suited for, without a technology bias, partners can optimize costs for their customers, he said.
If they have a burst in demand, they can scale in the cloud; for constant workloads they can rely more on their dedicated infrastructure.
More Slide Shows
