Microsoft Azure CTO: Hybrid cloud is here to stay, and that's what Azure offers over AWS

'It's hard to predict how many years, but I don't think it'll ever be completely done,' says Russinovich

If you ever saw a future for the enterprise where everything was in the cloud, you may want to think again, as Microsoft Azure chief technology officer Mark Russinovich disagrees with you.

Speaking to Computing at IP Expo in London after the "Future of Cloud" panel he participated in, Russinovich maintained that hybrid clouds will never actually go away, and that Microsoft is betting the farm on this scenario as both the future of cloud, and as a differentiator from Amazon Web Services (AWS), its main rival in the space.

Asked why a cloud-shopping customer should pick Azure over AWS, Russinovich replied: "It's a bunch of different things. The focus on end-to-end scenarios, machine learning through the Cortana Analytics Suite [which was launched recently around Windows 10], and hybrid. We've got, of course, a big focus on hybrid."

But Computing asked whether Russinovich believes, with trends moving towards greater virtualisation and cloud-hosting services, there could soon emerge a future in which hybridisation, like full on-premise hosting before it, becomes a rarity. How many years does hybrid have left?

"It's hard to predict how many years, but I don't think it'll ever be completely done," said Russinovich. "I think that just as now there are still mainframes running, and nobody talks about mainframes at all - well maybe IBM do - but 20 years from now I don't think you're going to see that."

But even if people stop talking about it, Russinovich doesn't believe they'll have stopped doing it. It's more that even the most cloud-reticent will have to dip their toe in, no matter how much of their original infrastructure they retain.

"If you're not in the cloud, you're going to miss out on that brand new ecosystem, and all those things you can't do on-prem.

"But is there going to be hybrid for a long time? Yes, because everybody's got a different situation in terms of what they have on-prem', their philosophies around sensitivity of data, where that data is with respect to where public cloud is and, in the fullness of time, public cloud's going to be everywhere."

Despite (or, perhaps, because of) the recent Safe Harbour judgments in the EU, Russinovich also believes those still working entirely on-premise may soon have their heads turned by cloud. But that, in itself, will be a very slow process for large organisations that haven't yet mobilised.

"These data sensitivity issues are all going to be addressed with security controls or changes in regulation or compliance, and so all the blockers for everything are eventually going to go away. And, at that point, it's just a matter of momentum for moving things, and the cost of moving things. That'll [also keep hybrid] around for a while.

"Certainly, the focus of technology is already very much on a shift away from on-prem' and that's just going to accelerate. So I think if you take a look at where innovation is happening, and where vendors and partners and customers are going to be focusing, it's all cloud," concluded Russinovich.