When cloud services started riding high in the world of business, it got branched in three different ways – private, public and hybrid.
Initially, non-critical workloads were handled by the public cloud services while businesses that had mission-critical needs relied on the private cloud services.
Then hybrid cloud services came into existence, and combined the best of both the worlds. Businesses began to realize that hybrid cloud services are not only economical, but provide business agility as well.
If you define hybrid cloud services through the words of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), it would be like this “a hybrid cloud is a combination of public and private clouds bound together by either standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability.”
Hybrid cloud services, probably, stemmed out of the need of the hour. Public cloud services were not considered completely secure, especially when you look at the number of security breaches that hijacked private information of users and that of the business enterprises themselves.
We have described here the best use cases of hybrid cloud applications to help plan your best practices in the infrastructure on a granular level.
#1. Distributing Computing Environment
The most important challenge for any IT management would be the pressure to reduce capital expenditure, control security risks and put a lid on management costs.
All this and more should be done by centralizing data storage, which is most often a herculean task when you look at the technology limitations and business operational models of enterprises.
Here’s where a Distributed Computing Environment comes into play. Distributed cloud computing would be more suitable for Government departments, retail companies and financial institutions where security is of prime concern.
There will be data centers and people working on them from different offices – at the head office, from branch offices, local office etc.
In distributed cloud computing, the major benefit would be storage cloud beneficial for data accessibility, data replication and provision for storing data in different hierarchies depending on when they are used.
#2. Differing Needs are Seamlessly Attended to
Different enterprises have different needs for running their digital operations. The main requirements would mostly be centered on hosting files and applications.
The infrastructure and facilities for private and public cloud computing would differ in capacity, security and speed while hybrid cloud has the capability to allocate resources on the basis of requirement and quality.
Though local, private and public clouds are safe on their own accord, enterprises want more layers of security added to it to protect all their sensitive data.
Hybrid cloud solutions would be the perfect option for enterprises looking for a safe solution for their capacity demands.
#3. Growing with Agility
Enterprises that plan to scale prefer to use hybrid cloud configuration to grow with agility. Scaling a business is not an easy task, because you have so many challenges to overcome, the biggest one being infrastructure.
Growing with agility asks for the flexibility offered by hybrid cloud providers. A reliable architecture means faster loading time for users, because this means your business will grow faster.
Hybrid cloud makes enterprises scale their application in another way as well.
Private cloud services often demand their client sign a contract with them, and this is something they find difficult, especially for those enterprises that wish to look for a short-term contract. And such enterprises prefer to go hybrid.
#4. To Render Faster Service to Web Savvy Users
Companies can adopt a hybrid cloud environment to uncover more insights about their users. This will help them anticipate user requirements depending on previous insights and start a meaningful conversation with them.
Marriott is the perfect example of a company using hybrid cloud solutions to provide the best user experience to their travelers. They offer faster digital services to enhance and improve traveler experience.
#5. Whenever Traffic is Expected to Spike
Hybrid solutions would provide the perfect respite for enterprises that need to handle all the web traffic that comes in during the busy seasons.
The spike may come in at any time. It could be during an event, a particular season or a new offer, so the servers must be able to handle the sudden spurt/traffic. Crashes are to be avoided at all costs because they can affect businesses dearly.
Since this is only a short-term requirement, most enterprises are happy with the hybrid solution.
#6. High Availability and Disaster Recovery
It is highly expensive for enterprises to achieve the geo-redundant setup when using private cloud. Enterprises can use hybrid clouds to help with Disaster Recovery (DR) and promote High Availability (HA).
An enterprise can keep critical data in a private cloud and a recovery environment in a public service, ready to call up whenever necessary. The data in the public cloud will be a replica, but they will remain inactive unless specifically called for.
In the aftermath of a disaster, enterprises can pull the data in the public cloud and save plenty of money in the process.
#7. To Overcome Cloud Bursting
Cloud bursting is a situation faced by enterprises when their workloads get spilled over to another cloud environment and when they exceed the storage limit. This could be temporary because spikes can happen in a seasonal manner.
In a hybrid cloud environment this would be managed easily. In a cloud bursting situation, enterprises, however, have to ensure that network connections between clouds are secure.
AWS Direct Connect and Azure Express Route are two low latency, secure network connections that can easily handle cloud bursting.
Mosaik Solutions is a company dealing with geospatial network intelligence. The company follows a hybrid approach to move its workloads from private cloud with Eucalyptus to public cloud with AWS and vice versa.
This is done securely and they are easily able to handle heavy influx of data during peak usage.
On a final note …
It is no longer the question of whether you want to move into the cloud, it is when you do it. A good number of enterprises are already moving into the cloud and those have not already will come to it at the end of the day.
It is estimated by Gartner that by 2020, cloud use will mostly be hybrid. Hybrid cloud may seem to be a bit complex in the initial stages, but when you concentrate on the key areas and work with a reliable service provider, you are good to go.
It is easy to eliminate all the barriers, usually those that are related to latency high speed internet access and cost when working with hybrid.
Image: Author’s Own
