As someone who has had to deal with two cloud-phobic industries now (auto and healthcare). I have to say the hope of the hybrid cloud being a differentiator, for RedHat/IBM, is misplaced.

Getting these players into the cloud is always hard, but the hybrid cloud doesn’t really soften the ground internally at most of these compliance heavy organizations. They are all aware of how awesome and wonderful the cloud is, it’s always politics that get in the way. Once an organization goes through the incredibly difficult process of allowing cloud projects (which involves lawyers, rewriting policies, compliance officers, etc), the organization usually puts all projects going forward onto the cloud and views the old stuff as legacy. The idea of trying to bridge the two is rarely considered worth it.

Of course there are exceptions. However where I see hybrid clouds do well is in organizations that are taking the task of porting everything to the cloud very seriously, but they know the project will take a while, so it is worth everybody working off of the same infrastructure playbook until they can shove everything in the cloud.

The days are dark for the folks that missed the cloud bandwagon over a decade ago.