Still Not in the Hybrid Cloud? 8 Reasons You Should Be
Three years ago Gartner predicted 50 percent of companies would adopt the newly-christened “hybrid cloud” by 2017. With 2017 less than six months away, how close did they come?
Today 35.8 percent of enterprises mix private and public computing resources in some fashion. In other words, the hybrid cloud. It’s expected to rise to 41 percent over the next five years. That doesn’t quite hit Gartner’s projection, but demand is growing 27 percent each year.
The list of reasons to adopt this approach is still evolving. If you’re not yet using a hybrid cloud infrastructure, here are eight of the most compelling.
#1 Lower cost: The “obvious choice
It’s been said before, but cloud computing can offer savings over traditional, on-premise infrastructure. With a private cloud, you get flexibility with more control, behind your own firewall. You’re ultimately constrained by your server farm’s capacity, though. The public cloud offers more elasticity. Adding the public cloud for as needed resources saves you the cost of adding and maintaining new on-premise equipment.
#2 Elasticity: Dynamic resources for changing needs
The public cloud provides temporary bursts of resources, computing power being the most noteworthy. For example, if you run payroll or billing twice a month, your processing needs spike at those times. The rest of the time those resources are idle. The public cloud’s elasticity allocates compute resources only as long as you need them. And you only pay for what you use.
#3 Scalability: Real growth is lasting
Scalability is similar to elasticity, except the resources can remain available to you indefinitely. Do you offer a service that needs sustained heavy processing in real time? As business booms and the number of users goes up, so does your computing and storage needs. Unless you’re dealing with sensitive information, scale up with public cloud where appropriate.
#4 Segmentation: The right security for the right content
You curate, store and disseminate tremendous amounts of information every day. This includes documents and content of every kind. Your users are just as varied: employees, customers, business partners and the general public.
Confidential information, like intellectual property, is best stored on your private cloud. Public company information, webpages and collateral can be stored on the public cloud. Customer and partner data can move between the two, with various security methods to secure them. With the hybrid cloud, you pick the best location for storing and sharing different kinds of information.
#5 Regulatory compliance: Keeping it private
It’s just as important to segment your company’s sensitive, regulated data. Besides keeping corporate data safe, there are strict regulations governing customer and financial data. These include protecting health information, banking data, Social Security numbers and much more. Store these in your private cloud, then let the public cloud handle the rest.
#6 Disaster recovery: Resuming normal operations faster
Even if you have your own internal implementation, what do you do when disaster strikes? A hybrid cloud infrastructure allows you to backup your infrastructure in the public cloud. It eliminates costly standby equipment that otherwise sits idle 99 percent of the time. With services like Paranet’s SimpleDR, you can failover any part of your infrastructure — from a single server to the entire company — in a matter of minutes. You can run your business in the cloud while executing your disaster recovery plan.
#7 Rapid deployments: Spinning it up and tearing it down
Hybrid cloud let IT departments turn up (or down) new servers and networks in minutes, rather than days or weeks. Need a new server for a proof of concept or a test environment? Create one in the public cloud, using a simple control panel. Just don’t forget to decommission it when you’re done to avoid costly and messy sprawl.
#8 Legacy applications: Some things are better left where they are
Finally, many enterprises have older, legacy applications, anything from databases to complex CRMs. These were built long before we imagined the cloud and may even no longer be supported. Yet these systems are still running. A hybrid cloud solution allows you to move applications to the cloud when and if they are ready. And you can leave your legacy systems where they are, until it’s time to retire them.
Not sure of the best approach to adopting a hybrid cloud solution? Find out how you can reap the benefits of both the private and public clouds at the same time. Set up an appointment with Paranet’s cloud experts today.
