Hyperscalers and managed services: what’s the future

Several factors contributed to digital transformation’s recent domination. Trends such as an increased dependence on cloud computing, IoT, the explosion of data across the organization – and the wider need for firms to develop digital platforms – are all driving transformation, the use of the cloud, and hyperscalers forward.

Couple this with an accelerated need for these technologies, brought on by the side effects of COVID on business and a requirement for better technology – this has equated to many organizations transitioning toward the cloud and its plethora of applications and possibilities at pace.

What is a hyperscaler?

At an enterprise level, enabling the cloud is critical. The majority of organizations’ applications need to be hosted in some sort of cloud and so for many, it means working with a hyperscaler.

Typically, at its most basic level, hyperscalers provide cloud, networking, and internet services at scale by offering organizations access to infrastructure via an IaaS model. Examples of today’s hyperscalers include Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Alibaba, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). These large companies are mainly dominating cloud services and are continuing to grow.

Many of today’s largest enterprises are already customers of all of the hyperscalers, allowing them to pick and choose services that best fit their business and, at the same time, avoid vendor lock-in.

The benefits of using hyperscaler services are multifold. Firstly, it’s important to recognize the power behind hyperscale data centers. To accommodate fluctuating and high demand, their infrastructure is built on thousands of physical servers and millions of virtual machines. The result is data center resources that are easily accessible, cost effective, reliable, and scalable.

What does hyperscale mean for my business?

For businesses, hyperscalers’ architecture often overshadows that of the traditional data center, offering them next-level performance without the complexity of managing a corporate data center. Furthermore, using a hyperscaler offers a level of reassurance in terms of the future. Hyperscalers constantly have an eye on what’s next. Microsoft, for example, recently revealed that it invested nearly $20bn to build the infrastructure necessary to support its Azure cloud. These organizations are constantly innovating and developing their infrastructure for the future – and businesses that use these services stand to grow and develop in tandem.

Taking advantage of hyperscale

For the next few years, enterprises will want to operate across multiple clouds and multiple data centers. The transformation challenge lies in reconciling a complex ecosystem of physical and virtual platforms that includes the existing enterprise data centers and a multi-cloud strategy.

This must address opening up legacy infrastructure to work with the cloud by answering how it can be transformed and operated to perform as a cloud-like platform. It’s often too difficult to refactor legacy applications for the cloud, so why not instead transform the underlying infrastructure to deliver many of the same benefits promised by the cloud?

On this journey towards adopting hyperscaler computing, it will be important for organizations to work with proven consultants and systems integrators that have the knowledge and expertise to enable the benefits of hyperscale computing while controlling the risks and uncertainties.

Within this, the key to achieving these goals is to adopt an end-to-end approach that allows the organization to maximize its cloud value. At Capgemini, we bring our substantial experience of migrations and delivery to enable a rapid, predictable migration to cloud.

Wherever you are on your journey to the cloud and hyperscale computing, Capgemini helps you take control, move forward with confidence, and reach the right destination sooner.