In order to achieve innovation, businesses must be equipped to deliver competitive, innovative and elastic apps – which they can easily integrate into existing applications, data and processes.

Not only this, but all enterprise innovation must also come into line with regulatory requirements. Satisfying all of these requirements is no mean feat, but it can be made much easier with the right cloud platform and cloud strategy in place.

In many cases, an enhanced private cloud can be the best foot forward when pursuing a multi-cloud strategy and IBM estimates that more than $50 billion a year will be spent on private clouds starting in 2017 with 15-20% growth through 2020.

>See also: The rise of multi-cloud and data controllers

In light of this, it is not surprising that companies are looking for cloud strategies that enable cloud native app creation, as well as being reliable, secure and scalable. One such strategy is to create a private cloud behind a firewall.

This means that development and administrative teams share a flexible cloud environment behind their firewalls to develop and update existing applications, as well as allowing them to maintain control of core data and processes. With this strategy – flexibility can be retained by having access to public clouds and services and so the best of both worlds can be maintained between private and public cloud.

Businesses in 2017 require a seamless environment when it comes to securely connecting internal and external resources in order to facilitate shifting resources between internal and public clouds. Only when this seamlessness is achieved, can businesses adapt their cloud strategy according to changing requirements. For this level of agility, a bridge between private and public cloud is essential.

>See also: Organisations need a multi-cloud strategy ‘urgently’ – IDC

When it comes to a multi-cloud environment, agility is equally as important to control. IBM Cloud Private brings a true cloud environment behind the firewall so businesses can maintain control over core data while giving developers the flexibility to easily update and launch new apps.

Innovation and flexibility

It is only by giving developers access, and a flexible platform to work with, that innovation can be achieved. To really drive DevOps within a business, developers need flexible environments for accessing valuable data, launching, enhancing and updating apps on their on-premises systems – without having to think about the underlying IT systems.

For example, a bank wants to make it easier to quickly add new services for customers but also needs consistent security measures across all apps. IBM Cloud Private creates a more flexible environment for launching and adding new apps while also helping ensure the same standards for all apps.

Existing solutions virtualise IT infrastructure for systems administrators, but they don’t go far enough in creating a truly flexible environment for developers or creating a seamless environment across on-premises systems and public clouds.

>See also: Managing hybrid and multi-cloud: agent or agentless?

The bottom line is that an open source cloud environment that embraces open standards is the only way to drive new innovations and ensure common frameworks across different environments.

Historically, the challenge of a multi-cloud environment has been bringing everything together – whether that be on or off premise, private or public. However, an integrated enterprise ecosystem is now achievable.

This integration must be across hardware, software and the services required to support enterprise apps. True integration allows enterprises to take full advantage of existing IT investments along with new opportunities in the cloud.

For any organisation, another major challenge of cloud computing has been speed of deployment – but this doesn’t have to be compromised in a multi-cloud environment. In this environment, containerisation is the answer.

When processes are moved into production, new applications can be activated in a few weeks as opposed to a few months. By adopting a product style method such as containerisation, deployment processes can be sped up by more than 50%. Although some workloads will remain traditional, using containerisation or an API can speed up maintenance that used to take hours into minutes.

>See also: Painting a multi-cloud masterpiece

In order to stay competitive, businesses need the flexibility and freedom to exploit services from multiple cloud providers. A truly integrated multi-cloud strategy allows for new apps to be designed, current apps to be updated, and a full integration of all data and processes. IBM Cloud Private provides that critical bridge between the IT infrastructure of today and a full-fledged cloud strategy of tomorrow.

In this way, choice can be placed back with companies themselves – allowing businesses to decide for themselves what work should run where – especially when it comes to their most important mission critical applications.

Sourced by Helen Kelisky, VP IBM Cloud UKI