Finding The Sweet Spot: 3 Reasons Why You Need To Adopt A Hybrid Cloud Model
Cloud computing is a hot topic in the business world today. It is not uncommon for a company to operate at least partially in the cloud, and research shows that this trend is on the rise. The most recent State of the Cloud Survey found that enterprise adoption of private cloud environments rose 13 percent in the past year, considerably driving up the adoption of hybrid cloud environments overall.
When it comes to choosing either a public or private cloud infrastructure, there are large camps of proponents on either side. The public cloud allows for unparalleled scalability and the ability to consume IT, and the pay-as-you-go model saves you money on unused utilities. On the other side, champions of private cloud tout its ease of management, visibility, security, and privacy. Obviously, every business has different needs, so it can be hard to choose just one option. That’s where the concept of the hybrid cloud model comes into play. Let’s discuss just a few of the benefits you’ll find when you adopt this method of cloud computing.
1) Hand-Picked Services
When moving to the cloud, you may find that some operations are better fit to be housed in a public cloud while others would be more efficient in a private cloud environment. Applications and services that are customer-facing and rapidly changing might be better placed in a public cloud while infrastructural components like data and the like might make more sense in you own private instance.
A hybrid cloud model gives you the liberty to pick and choose which components of your business go where. Information that is set in stone can be placed in your private cloud for ease of management and visibility, while fluid operations can live in your public cloud for increased scalability. The hybrid model ultimately grants your IT team more control over day-to-day operations and deployment of actions.
2) On-Premise Value without the Burden
There is no doubt that having all of your data on-premise is a very nice benefit — your information is secure and you don’t have to worry about sharing space with others which can lead to performance bottleneck. However, running a dedicated physical data center based on traditional storage and compute architectures is costly, and it doesn’t allow for the flexibility of services of the public cloud server.
The allure of the hybrid cloud setup is pretty simple: you can have the best of both worlds. If you already have a private cloud infrastructure, you can still utilize it for more sensitive, secure, and predictable growth data center operations, all while exploring ways to leverage the public cloud for more unpredictable workloads and seasonal spikes. Be sure your private cloud infrastructure is based on architecture and solutions that play well with the public cloud providers.
3) Security of Redundancy
The most optimal way of ensuring the protection of valuable data and smooth, uninterrupted operations is through redundancy. Creating multiple instances of your information is certainly not breaking news in the world of IT, but it is a practice that can be made a lot easier in the hybrid cloud model.
In the instance of disaster, it is imperative to have a backup plan. A hybrid cloud environment promotes this kind of security — you can store critical applications and data inside of both to improve user access, increase redundancy, and reduce overall risk. If one cloud goes down, you can fall back on the other to avoid interrupted service.
The dominance of the hybrid cloud model in business today is inevitable — estimates are that half of all large enterprises will have deployed a hybrid cloud model by the end of this year. It is in the best interest of your company, whether large or small, to act now on this trend. With the ability to pick which services are housed where, enjoy the value of on-premise capabilities with the flexibility of a public cloud, and create a redundant environment to mitigate risk, you’ll find that your IT operations will evolve in a way that promotes organic growth and innovation within your organization.
