6 - Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud is no longer just a transitional state between on-premises and public cloud — for many enterprises, it is an end state in its own right. Chris is joined by Thomas Maurer, Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, to explore this shift in thinking and how Microsoft’s Azure platform is evolving to support it.
Thomas explains that hybrid today extends well beyond the traditional on-premises-plus-Azure model. It encompasses factory floors running IoT edge workloads that cannot tolerate internet dependency, retail stores with local compute requirements, disaster recovery and backup scenarios, and true multi-cloud deployments spanning multiple public cloud providers. The episode covers a broad range of Azure technologies designed to bring cloud-like management and consistency to all of these environments: Azure Stack Hub, Azure Stack HCI, Azure Stack Edge, Azure Arc, and Azure IoT Edge.
A recurring theme is that containers and Kubernetes are the common thread enabling workloads to be deployed consistently — whether on Azure, on-premises hardware, or to IoT devices at the edge. The conversation closes with practical advice for organisations beginning their hybrid cloud journey: start small with a single, high-value use case (such as Azure Update Management or Azure Site Recovery), learn from the experience, then iterate. This mirrors the incremental, agile approach that underpins strong DevOps practice.
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