Hybrid cloud is an IT infrastructure design that integrates a company’s internal IT resources with third-party cloud provider infrastructure and services. With hybrid cloud, you can store your data and run your applications across multiple environments. Your hybrid cloud environment helps you provision, scale, and centrally manage your compute resources.
Why do businesses implement a hybrid cloud?
Hybrid cloud infrastructure emerged with the increasing adoption of cloud technology. Companies had to integrate their existing systems with modern cloud resources.
In addition to cloud migration and modernization efforts, there are myriad other reasons to adopt a hybrid cloud, such as low-latency needs, local data processing, and data residency. Hybrid cloud solutions let you use the best of every cloud option. With more granular control over IT resources, you can optimize spend. Hybrid cloud also helps you modernize applications faster, and connect cloud services to data in a secure manner that delivers new value. Other reasons to adopt hybrid cloud include differentiated end-user experiences and adherence to data regulations.
Further details about hybrid cloud benefits follow.
Increased development agility
A hybrid cloud model lets you launch new products to market faster. You can customize your infrastructure to test new ideas with added confidence.
Greater scalability
As your business grows, the demand increases for your compute resources, also known as workloads. These resources include memory, processing speed, and network bandwidth. A hybrid cloud lets you move your workloads between different environments so you can scale in a cost-effective way.
Business continuity
Business continuity is the ability to continue operations without interruption, even in the event of failure, maintenance, or other changes. Hybrid cloud models reduce downtime and improve user experience. For instance, if your private cloud infrastructure is undergoing an upgrade, you can move your workloads to public cloud environments to maintain business continuity.
What are some use cases of hybrid cloud?
Hybrid cloud environments have use cases for virtually any enterprise. Several examples follow:
Support low-latency applications
Some applications require immediate client and server communication with less than a second of lag time. For such services, you can use existing cloud infrastructure or bring cloud infrastructure and services close to where end users are located. A cloud strategy based on geolocation is often used in these fields:
· Manufacturing automation
· Content creation
· Real-time gaming
· Augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR)
Process data locally
You can use hybrid clouds for data management services. Certain big data processing tasks must be done on premises due to size, bandwidth, or timing constraints. You can do these tasks in your local data center and periodically back up the data in a public cloud solution.
Help meet regulatory compliance
With hybrid cloud services, you can help meet your compliance requirements. Instead of building data centers around the globe, you can use public cloud infrastructure to store data in a specific location that meets your security and regulatory requirements. Using hybrid technology, you can use the same services and tools to manage, analyze, and archive that data wherever it resides.
Extend your data center
Hybrid clouds support your data center extension needs. For example, maybe you want to provision resources automatically as needed, and your application traffic spikes very heavily in December but is much lower for the rest of the year. You can use a combination of public and private clouds to avoid buying more hardware that will remain idle for much of the year.
Support cloud migration efforts
Cloud migration is the process of moving digital assets, such as applications, data, and workloads, to public cloud infrastructure. A hybrid cloud solution supports this transition and lets you make the switch gradually with minimal service disruption.
How do hybrid clouds work?
Instead of connecting the environments themselves, modern development teams focus on maximizing the portability of the applications that run in the environments. In other words, you could build a road to connect two cities, or you could build a helicopter that flies between the cities, saving significantly on infrastructure expenses.
Developers build applications that can be deployed as a collection of small, independent, and loosely coupled services. They set up the hybrid architecture to accomplish the following tasks:
· Run the same operating system in all private and public clouds
· Manage the hybrid cloud architecture on a unified platform
· Make the application portable and platform independent
· Use automation to manage application deployment
· Support deployment on virtual machines and containers
In more practical terms, implementing the following can help with a hybrid cloud strategy:
· Develop and deploy cloud-based applications
· Automate the management and coordination of computer resources, called orchestration, using software like Kubernetes
· Implement strategies to switch resource utilization between clouds when needed
What is hybrid cloud strategy?
There are some factors to consider when implementing a hybrid cloud architecture:
Cloud provisioning
Research the different cloud providers available. You will find differences in the tools, interfaces, and services they offer.
Application workloads
Your hybrid cloud management strategy should consider your workloads and data storage requirements. The following factors can help determine which cloud to use for which workload:
· Data security
· Regulatory compliance
· Computing environment requirements
· Cloud computing technology
· Price and accessibility
For example, governance mandates might require that your application data remain confined to specific geographies. Your system might also use older technology that requires modern tools and APIs before you can migrate it to separate clouds.
Modernization plans
It’s important to think about the future before making new cloud computing decisions. Technology evolves rapidly, and your hybrid cloud management should match this pace. You need to have systems that can quickly adapt to new technology and give you a competitive edge.
