What are the benefits of hybrid cloud?

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

In the past, organizations 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 organizations globally are already using (or piloting) hybrid cloud, with a further 32.7% of respondents planning to implement a hybrid solution within one to two 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 organization 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 a hybrid-cloud approach?

Hybrid-cloud computing offers several benefits to organizations, and their popularity continues to grow among large organizations around the globe.

Employee support – from anywhere

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was increasingly shifting toward 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 together effectively. 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 organizations the flexibility to support all their employees (wherever they are) with on-demand access to data. Sensitive data can be maintained on a private on-premises 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 organizations more control over their critical and sensitive data.

The organization can choose which data needs to be housed on a private cloud based on compliance and security requirements. Data stored on a public cloud may be more vulnerable to cyberattacks and various forms of data leakage, so organizations 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 an organization, and the hybrid cloud can offer certain cost benefits.

A hybrid cloud is an elegant solution for organizations that need strict data security but also the ability to scale their operations cost-effectively.

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.

Organizations that use only a private cloud may face high capital expenditure when they need to expand their infrastructure. But by combining the benefits of a public-cloud component, organizations can keep costs low when expanding infrastructure on the public cloud, which offers cost-effective scaling.

Improved control with scalability

The hybrid cloud gives organizations control over their data, using their private cloud. Instead of entrusting a third-party cloud provider with all their critical data, organizations 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.

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

Business continuity

Hybrid-cloud models ensure that your organizations reduces potential downtime and improves reliability.  Another key benefit is that it allows for the backup of key data and quick and simple recovery in case of a failure.

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

If you think a hybrid cloud might be the right solution for your organization, contact us for expert advice on the cloud solution best suited for your organization and the migration, operation and optimization of your cloud environment.