What are the Benefits of Hybrid Cloud

If you’re looking for cloud solutions for your business, you may have spent time considering whether to select a public, private or hybrid cloud solution.

In the past, companies chose between two distinct cloud types: a public cloud, that ran off-premises or a private cloud, that ran on-premises. These days, the cloud environment has become much more complex, with the Hybrid cloud forming an interesting alternative to public and private, offering essentially the best of both worlds. 

According to the NTT 2021 Hybrid Cloud Report, 60.9% of organisations globally are already using (or piloting) hybrid cloud, with a further 32.7% of respondents planning to implement a hybrid solution within 1 to 2 years.

What is a hybrid cloud?

Hybrid cloud refers to a cloud environment that is made up of both on-premises infrastructure in a private cloud, as well as a public cloud with collaboration between the two. 
Workloads can move between the two interconnected environments, giving your business the flexibility and agility it needs for data deployment.

Why hybrid cloud?

The hybrid cloud can offer the security advantages of a private cloud combined with the flexibility of a public cloud. The hybrid cloud will potentially be more cost effective than a fully private cloud. And you can keep control over your data while allowing employees the flexibility to work from anywhere. 

What are the benefits of hybrid cloud approach?

Hybrid cloud computing offers a number of benefits organisations, and their popularity continues to grow amongst large organisations around the globe. 

• Employee support – from anywhere

Even before the Corona Virus pandemic, the world was increasingly shifting towards a “work from anywhere” mentality. More businesses have been embracing the idea that teams don’t necessarily have to sit in the same building to work effectively together. But you do need to ensure that your workforce has access to all the tools and data they need to do their jobs efficiently. 

A hybrid cloud gives businesses the flexibility to support all employees (wherever they are) with on-demand access to data. 

Sensitive data can be maintained on a private on-premise server, while all other data, services and applications can be accessed on the public cloud.

• Improved security and risk management

One of the benefits of hybrid cloud computing is that it gives businesses more control over their critical and sensitive data.

The business can choose which data needs to be housed on a private cloud based on compliance and security requirements. Data stored on a public cloud could be more vulnerable to cyberattacks and various forms of data leakage, so businesses often choose to keep control of their proprietary data on a private cloud. 

Strong technical security measures such as encryption and access control are used to secure the hybrid cloud. Extensive encryption methods are used to encrypt any data transmitted from the private cloud to the public cloud for analytics, applications, and other processes.

• Reduced costs 
  

Cost is always a key factor for a business, and the hybrid cloud can offer certain cost benefits.

A hybrid cloud is an elegant solution for companies who need strict data security, but the ability to cost-effectively scale their operations.

Core, business-critical and sensitive data can be stored on their own private cloud, but less sensitive data and applications can sit in the public cloud. 

Companies that only utilise a private cloud would have a huge capital expenditure when needing to expand their infrastructure. But by combining the benefits of a public cloud component, companies can keep costs low when expanding infrastructure on the public cloud, which offers cost-effective scaling.

• Improved control with scalability

The hybrid cloud ensures a company has control over its data, using its private cloud. Instead of entrusting a third-party cloud provider with all their critical data, companies can decide what they remain in full control of in their private cloud.

At the same time, scaling operations on the public cloud is easy and seamless.

Organisations can quickly adapt to changes in demand. IT performance can be optimised, and new products can be tested, prototyped and launched quickly using the public platform.

• Business continuity
  

Hybrid cloud models ensure that your business reduces potential downtime, and improves reliability. 

Another key benefit of hybrid cloud is that it allows for the backup of key data, and the quick and simple recovery in the case of a failure.

In the case of an on-site disaster such as a fire or massive weather event, virtual machines (VM) can be used to run a copy of workstations or servers. Local problems (such as flooding or fire) cannot affect the virtual machine. In this case, companies can failover to the cloud, and avoid downtime. Their data and operations will continue to work virtually. 

Dimension Data – experts in cloud implementation

If you think a hybrid cloud might be the right solution for your business, speak to us about our cloud advisory service. We will gladly assess your needs and give you expert advice on the cloud solution best suited for your business. We can help with migration, operation and  optimisation of your cloud environment. Speak to us today.