Step 3: Go Cloud to Cloud
Policies help automate and orchestrate services to your applications based on business requirements (e.g. cost, capacity, performance, and security), according to the different capabilities of your on-premise or cloud resources. This also means data is efficiently discoverable and accessible across multiple clouds – the cloud data management platform considers the differences in services provided by the different clouds and moves or copies data to the right one.
When data is organized by storage silo or tracked by databases that only a single application has access to, the data can most often only be utilized that single application or a small number of users. Instead start to use metadata as the organizing principle for your data, which is enabled by cloud-native storage. When metadata sits right alongside the data it’s representing, it can be globally indexed and made available to many applications and groups of users.
Step 4: Go Deep
When data placement policies enable a true hybrid cloud workflow, not constrained by physical infrastructure, you can unlock more capabilities. You can start to use metadata – the data about the data – as what we call the organizing principle. Cloud-native data holds its own metadata right alongside it, not in a separate database only its own specific application can read. Your metadata can now be globally indexed and made available to many applications and groups of users.
Whether you like it or not, you will be in the cloud in some capacity. Follow these steps to not only make the transition to public infrastructure hassle-free, but to bring many of the business dynamics of cloud – pricing based on consumption, massive scalability, collaboration, etc. – into your datacenter and increase the value of your data.
Erik Pounds is head of product marketing at SwiftStack.
- Entry-level IT: Clearing misconceptions in the AI era - August 26, 2026
- To rebuild adult learner confidence, universities must first earn their trust - August 24, 2026
- Schools are building AI rules before they know the destination - August 17, 2026