The objective for a hybrid cloud computing solution should be to bring on-premises and cloud computing together | Blogging Thoughts on SharePoint and Office 365

Early into a one hour presentation on hybrid computing scenarios for SharePoint 2013 on-premises, and Office 365, Paolo Pialorsi states an objective most organizations will likely implement when they embark on a hybrid cloud computing project — to build an integrated computing solution from cloud and on-premises components.

The title of Pialorsi’s presentation is Overview of Microsoft SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 Hybrid Scenarios. He points to two prime areas where hybrid computing scenarios will likely make sense: enterprise search, and any services built with Business Connectivity Services (BCS). The latter usually pop up for organizations needing to pull external data into a SharePoint computing environment.

When the broad benefit of a seamless computing experience is applied to enterprise content search, Pialorsi explains, users will be able to “[s]earch for content in both SharePoint Server 2013 and SharePoint Online at once”.

These users should also be able to consume “on-premises business data” from SharePoint Online (and, presumably, through the use of mobile computing devices like smartphones and tablets).

Finally, the computing experience for users, regardless of whether or not they are working on-premises, or remotely, must be uniform.

The principal drivers pushing organizations to implement these scenarios include polices designed to support Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives. Once BYOD policies are approved, most organizations experience a substantial change in the manner under which data is processed. Some content is reposed on line, in addition to the usual content with is stored on-premises.

Pialorsi cites Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS) as one control organizations should implement to simplify the task of supporting BYOD computing by providing communities with a “single sign-on for users via ADFS”.

Two other drivers for hybrid scenarios include trusted solutions and performance concerns with regard to “[s]ome business data (ERP, DBMS, DWH) [which] are on-premises”.

We’ve written elsewhere in this blog on the topic of how organization can, inadvertently, restrict their own ability to capitalize on perceived benefits to be realized from a decision to implement cloud computing, by implementing full trusted solutions for SharePoint. One can argue the Office 2013 app model provides a route for these organizations out of this restriction, but, as Pialorsi notes, the pace at which organizations have implemented the Office 2013 app model has been very slow. Bottom line: as long as organizations require trusted solutions, SharePoint 2013 computing, on-premises, will have to stay as is.