Hybrid Cloud – A preferred option

Hybrid Cloud is a combination of on-prem Infrastructure, private Cloud with 1 or more public clouds. This is governed by a common platform to ensure seamless functioning of enterprise applications and services. Though the potential of hybrid cloud in scaling the productivity of the business is unfathomable but one must deploy the right strategies and tools to overcome the challenges lurking in the corners.

Hybrid cloud is taken up to avoid capex, required to invest in a data center expansion due to business growth and leverage the option of a public cloud. Organizations could retain their sensitive data in their on-prem environment and have rest of the data in public cloud. Similarly, organizations can minimize the IT costs by moving the less accessed data to public cloud and utilizing the on-prem or private cloud for active business data needs. Despite a plethora of options offered by cloud providers, organizations cannot afford to risk any latency and this has augmented the need for a hybrid cloud. Through this, enterprises can have their business-critical applications in their on-prem environment nearer to their user’s community or geography and less critical applications in public cloud.

Many enterprises are retaining their on-prem computing wherever they have standard workloads and leverage public cloud for dynamic workloads which requires elasticity and scalability as per business dynamics. Some organizations may not be able to modernize their legacy business critical applications and environment, in those scenarios they can still retain that in on-prem and use public cloud for other applications and services. With hybrid cloud, the shift in adapting to new technologies for Digital Transformations has become effortless as the organization could take advantage of the multiple options available in public cloud. As the hybrid cloud amalgamates and provide a complete solution to all enterprises business needs, it is no surprise that this computing platform is gaining popularity.

Despite the innumerable benefits of hybrid cloud, some challenges do exist. By enabling hybrid cloud, there is a chance of opex increase as the compute time is divided between on-prem and public cloud thus losing the discount options etc available in the public cloud domain. Another major challenge is the concern of security as the information can be subject to interference when it is being transported in a network. Thus, managing common security standards and policies in both on-prem/private cloud and public cloud becomes a complex one. Besides, the hybrid cloud limits the automation of workloads because it demands expert skills and more manual work to configure the on-prem, private and public platforms.  

Today, organizations are spoiled with choices in public cloud options and thus choosing an apt public cloud platform that benefits them is a challenge. So, it is critical to weigh their options first and take into consideration factors such as price, scale, support and service, while going for a public cloud especially in a Hybrid model. In the long run, it is the selection of apt service providers that determines the fruitful outcomes of enterprise’s business. As the hybrid cloud is a fusion of on-prem, private and public clouds, there arises the problem of management complexity. Additional investment in tools for the operations management to make it a unified set up is needed as orchestration between both on-prem & public cloud is vital. On-prem, private and public cloud require a plethora of tools to manage the services and it is a challenging task to attain a perfect sync between them. In such cases, one should either master each platform and gather insights about their native tools or one must be poised to build another software for the same. And the chances are high that even that may have other unseen repercussions. 

As said, there is a solution to every problem and it is through which we fortify ourselves for advancement. To overcome these challenges, cloud providers and organizations are investing heavily and making efforts to have this hybrid cloud management, more effective. Hybrid cloud comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages but organizations should consider the value that it offers as the best of both on-prem/private cloud and public cloud. Based on each organization’s needs and priorities, they must determine what would benefit them more. By doing proper risk management and establishing an effective governance through appropriate tools, the hybrid cloud model would be the preferred option to ensure a consistent, reliable and high level of performance for organizations, in the long run.