Incorporate automation. New technologies now allow you to automate how you build, deploy and manage your infrastructure. This can scale from within your data center and all the way out to your cloud. There are a few ways to approach the automation layer.
Open-source vs. proprietary – both can be great. There are new tools which allow you to dynamically control the numerous resources which make up your cloud environment.
Using next-gen load-balancers and WANOP. Your WAN optimization platform doesn’t have to be all physical. If your hybrid cloud is a diverse platform with data centers of various sizes, optimization must span both the logical and physical.
Software-defined technologies to the rescue. There are some very real use-cases for software-defined technologies. You can now abstract physical resources at the network, storage, compute and even data center layer. For example, Atlantis USX integrates policy-based controls for all storage resource pointed to the virtual appliance. From there, the platform pools, accelerates and optimizes existing SAN, NAS, RAM and any type of DAS (SSD, Flash, SAS).
Integrate next-generation security. New security solutions are allowing cloud services to be a lot more agile. Now, organizations can incorporate virtual security appliances for even greater control of their data. Palo Alto and their virtual firewall system allows administrators to abstract security services. This creates managed security multi-tenancy and improved scalability.