As enterprises rapidly advance their digital transformation journey, hybrid cloud has emerged as the prevailing IT model. By combining the use of on-premises infrastructure, private cloud and public cloud, the hybrid model enables organisations to meet regulatory and security requirements, whilst leveraging the business value, flexibility, scalability and performance benefits of public cloud services.
However, this evolution brings a critical challenge to the forefront: visibility.
A recent survey by KPMG reported that 50% of respondents find cloud pricing too complicated, and 75% cite lack of visibility as a primary cost problem.
KPMG highlights that many enterprises fail to “architect efficiently” and lean on lift‑and‑shift approaches that inherit inefficiencies.
For CIOs, hybrid cloud visibility isn’t just a technical concern, it’s critical to the success of the hybrid cloud strategy. Without a clear, unified view of assets, usage, and costs across the ‘cloud+’ scope of on-premises infrastructure, private cloud, and public cloud services, it becomes harder for organisations to make clear value-driven and strategic decisions.
So, how can you prevent losing control over your IT environments, budgets, and compliance posture?
Identify the Visibility Gap in Hybrid Environments
Hybrid cloud environments are inherently complex. They span multiple platforms, vendors, and geographies. Traditional IT asset management (ITAM) and software asset management (SAM) tools were not designed to operate across such fragmented ecosystems, or manage compute costs in a value-driven, granular way.
Conversely, the new wave of Cloud management and FinOps tools have been highly cloud-centric in their conception so far, useful for driving optimization, but with no regard for on-premises infrastructure.
As a result, management blind spots make it difficult to reconcile the on-prem and private cloud worlds with public cloud. This leads to some common challenges:
· Shadow IT and SaaS sprawl: Business units frequently adopt cloud services outside of IT’s purview, leading to unmanaged risk and redundant spend.
· Inconsistent data: Disparate tools and siloed systems make it difficult to reconcile asset data, leading to inaccurate reporting and poor decision-making.
· Cost unpredictability: Without real-time visibility into cloud consumption, organizations struggle to align usage with budgets or apply FinOps principles effectively.
These challenges are compounded by the pace of change. New cloud services, applications, and infrastructure are being deployed constantly, often without centralized oversight. This makes it nearly impossible to maintain a reliable inventory of assets, let alone optimize them.
Make hybrid cloud work for your business
As the race towards AI increases, so does the criticality and cost of workloads. The challenge for many CIOs isn’t necessarily as simple as having a ‘cloud first’ approach, but more so a ‘cloud appropriate’ view – where is the best place to put a particular workload? Is it best to use AWS? Oracle cloud? GCP? Or is it better to repatriate back to our own data centres?
There are many dynamics to these decisions, beyond mere price and performance. Organisations with mature ITAM and FinOps processes may be driven by the need for a more granular cost-benefit analysis of services to perform chargeback / showback for specific business stakeholders. There may be data security or location regulations to comply to, or a need to scale rapidly, for example.
Why Visibility Matters More Than Ever
Being appropriate to multi-dimensional business demands requires a clear understanding of your options. This is where better visibility and greater unification of information across on-premises, private and public cloud options will enable the total value of a faster and stronger hybrid cloud policy to be optimized.
Equally, the consequences of having poor ITAM and FinOps visibility in the ‘cloud+’ era are also far-reaching.
Security: Unknown assets are unprotected assets. You can’t manage or secure what you can’t see.
Finance: Lack of insight leads to inevitable overspending and missed opportunities for optimization.
Governance: Compliance becomes impossible to enforce when you can’t see what you’re managing.
Today’s CIOs are also under increasing pressure to deliver value from IT investments while navigating rapid change. Hybrid cloud environments evolve constantly; new workloads, services, and users are introduced daily. Without continuous visibility, IT leaders are always reacting instead of proactively managing. Visibility enables agility, accountability, and alignment with business goals, all of which are essential in a hybrid-first world.
For CIOs, this means that visibility is not just about operational efficiency — it’s about enabling strategic control. It’s the foundation for:
· Effective FinOps: Understanding where cloud spend is going, who’s using what, and how to optimize it.
· Optimized IT Asset Management: Fundamental visibility of critical IT infrastructure, driving value from investments and more efficient technology consumption.
· Stronger security and compliance: Identifying vulnerabilities, enforcing policies, and demonstrating control to auditors.
· Smarter decision-making: Using accurate, real-time data to guide investments, rationalize software portfolios, and support digital transformation.
Moreover, visibility supports cross-functional collaboration. Finance, procurement, security, and IT operations all rely on accurate asset data to do their jobs effectively.
When CIOs can provide a single source of truth, they empower the entire organization to move faster and with greater confidence that they’re moving in the right strategic direction.
The Role of Unified Platforms
To close the visibility gap, CIOs need more than just better tools they need a unified platform that brings together ITAM, SAM, SaaS management, and FinOps capabilities under one roof.
That’s where Certero Unified Platform comes in.
Certero’s hybrid cloud visibility solutions are designed to give CIOs a single source of truth across their entire IT estate. From on-premises servers to SaaS applications and everything in between. With automated discovery, real-time analytics, and actionable insights, Certero empowers IT leaders to take back control, reduce risk, and drive value from their technology investments.
Unlike point solutions that only address part of the problem, Certero provides a holistic view that spans the full lifecycle of IT assets, from procurement and deployment to usage, optimization, and retirement. This unified approach not only improves accuracy but also reduces the time and effort required to manage complex environments.
Ready to See the Full Picture?
Hybrid cloud is here to stay but so are the challenges that come with it. If you’re ready to eliminate blind spots, optimize spend, and lead with confidence, it’s time to take the next step.
CerteroX solutions for FinOps, ITAM and SAM brings the full hybrid cloud+ scope into sharp focus.
Take a look for yourself and see how unified visibility can transform your hybrid cloud strategy.
