The drumbeat of companies transitioning applications out of the public cloud and into servers that they control has become a bit louder thanks to retail giant Walmart’s move toward a greater emphasis on traditional data center infrastructure.  

A Wall Street Journal article highlighting Walmart’s IT infrastructure strategy illustrates how the retailer is utilizing over 10,000 edge nodes housed in their stores and warehouses to “reduce their dependence upon giant technology companies” while “saving millions of dollars.”

While highlighting their cloud providers and on-site infrastructure, not mentioned in the article is Walmart’s infrastructure footprint in some large centralized data centers. The company houses applications in a variety of infrastructure to best “reduce cloud cost and boost performance.”  In other words, Walmart is utilizing a hybrid infrastructure strategy that has benefited by de-emphasizing the cloud.

The results?  According to the Journal’s reporting, the strategy has “saved the company between 10% and 18% in annual cloud spending and has helped reduce cloud outages, an issue that has plagued the industry.”

Despite backing off from the cloud, the article reports that “(Walmart Global Chief Technology Officer Suresh) Kumar insists that Walmart is ‘maintaining long-term strategic partnerships’ with Microsoft and Google” for public cloud services.   Walmart hasn’t left the cloud, just found ways to improve the performance while reducing spend.  Kumar’s team has done this by utilizing the best venue for each application, largely through moving workloads from the cloud to traditional data center infrastructure. 

Chances are your organization’s needs don’t dovetail exactly with those of Walmart.  But it is likely that your cloud experience has been similar, as hyperscalers, enterprises, and SMBs alike frequently report:

• cloud costs that run higher than anticipated.

• cloud outages that are frustrating.

• a desire for greater security and control for certain applications than are available in the cloud.

• preference for keeping applications that are performing well in their current environments.

• concern with putting their entire infrastructure in the hands of a single cloud provider.

• the need for a flexible mix of infrastructure that includes cloud, data centers, and other venues.

This all adds up to organizations overwhelmingly preferring a hybrid solution.  Some cloud applications where appropriate, and some traditional data center infrastructure where that works best. 

If traditional data center infrastructure with the ability to connect to the cloud is part of your future, discuss your hybrid infrastructure needs with us here at Direct LTx.   We can provide highly redundant colocation environments that connect with over a dozen carriers and multiple public clouds.  Direct LTx is located 84 feet above the 500-year flood plain just 51 miles from Center City Philadelphia and we’d love to talk to you.  Contact us at sales@directltx.com