If you’re a CIO who is managing hybrid infrastructure, you’re like the peace-keeper in a dysfunctional family. On one side, you’ve got the old-school on-prem team—practical, cost-conscious, maybe a little stubborn. On the other hand, the cloud team is fast-moving, quickly adopting the latest tools, and sometimes a little dismissive of “legacy” infrastructure. And just like a family that doesn’t get along, they barely talk to each other.

I see this all the time. A CIO will tell me, “I need to unify my infrastructure strategy,” but when I speak with their teams, it’s like talking to two different companies. The cloud engineers don’t know (or care) what the on-prem team does, and the on-prem team sees the cloud people as reckless spenders who don’t understand “real” infrastructure.

Hybrid Isn’t Going Away—So We’d Better Get It Right

The thing is, both sides have a point. On-prem infrastructure is more predictable in cost, often more secure, and sometimes just makes sense for certain workloads. And the flexibility and scalability of cloud infrastructure are real.

This means hybrid is the future. But right now, it’s a future filled with inefficiency, wasted budgets and unnecessary complexity.

The Reality: Two Worlds That Don’t Talk

Here’s a real example. I was on a call with a large financial institution, and the goal was to show how to manage both on-prem resources with Ansible and cloud infrastructure with Terraform. But the on-prem person didn’t show up for some reason. It was a wasted meeting because the cloud team hadn’t a clue what the on-prem team did, so talk of cohesion between the two siloed departments was impossible.

A week earlier, I had spoken to their CTO, who was practically begging for a solution to bring these teams together. His teams were using completely separate toolchains, paying over $1 million annually for tools that didn’t even integrate. He had no visibility, no way to make informed decisions, and worst of all, no real collaboration between his teams.

This is very bad for business. It prevents the company from scaling, optimizing costs, and, most importantly, moving fast without breaking things.

Hybrid Is the Future, Whether We Like It or Not

In my opinion, hybrid is here to stay. Some workloads will always belong on-prem due to security, compliance or cost reasons. Others will thrive in the cloud, where elasticity and managed services make life easier. The problem is most organizations haven’t figured out how to make this coexistence work smoothly.

Right now, hybrid infrastructure feels like owning two cars but having no idea which one to use on any given day. Imagine having to change the tires, handle maintenance, and refuel separately for each—without even knowing how often you’re driving them. That’s what most CIOs are dealing with when it comes to managing a mix of cloud and on-prem workloads. Without unified visibility, decisions get made in silos, costs spiral out of control and teams get stuck in an endless cycle of firefighting instead of innovating.

Infrastructure as Code Orchestration: The Bridge We Need

This is where infrastructure-as-code (IaC) orchestration comes in. If hybrid infrastructure is inherently complex, then the answer isn’t just automation—it’s orchestration.

Automation alone won’t fix the fragmentation. You can automate tasks all day long, but if each team automates in its own way with different tools, you’re just adding complexity at scale. Orchestration, on the other hand, introduces a single layer of control—one set of workflows that unifies deployment and ongoing operational management across on-prem and cloud infrastructure.

Here’s what this actually means in practice:

● Visibility – Instead of scattered tools and isolated teams, you get a single source of truth for your infrastructure.

● Efficiency – No more redundant work. Instead of two teams doing similar things in totally different ways, orchestration allows for shared workflows.

● Security & Compliance – Unified policy enforcement across all environments. No more guesswork or inconsistent controls.

● Developer Velocity Without Losing Control – The ability to move fast while ensuring infrastructure changes are auditable, reversible and compliant.

I’ve seen companies try to duct-tape their way around this problem. They build custom pipelines with Jenkins or GitHub Actions, but eventually, they hit a wall. One company (who I can’t name, but let’s just say they handle a lot of digital documents) tried to do this with GitHub Actions, relying on one engineer to make it work. His salary alone cost them more than an orchestration platform, and if he left, they’d be completely stuck. That’s not a strategy—it’s a liability.

The CIO’s Next Move

If you’re a CIO dealing with hybrid headaches, here’s what you should be asking yourself:

1. Do I actually have visibility into both my on-prem and cloud environments? (If the answer is no, that’s problem #1.)

2. Are my teams working together, or are they operating as separate entities?

3. How much are we spending on redundant tools that don’t integrate?

4. What’s slowing down our infrastructure deployments, and is it avoidable?

The companies that solve this problem first are the ones that will be best positioned for the future. They’ll move faster, spend smarter and avoid the kind of growing pains that turn into existential crises.

If any of those questions made you uncomfortable, it’s time to rethink your approach. Hybrid doesn’t have to be a battleground. With the right orchestration, it can actually be an advantage