Hybrid cloud architecture allows companies to bring together the best of both worlds while still allowing for a seamless cloud interface. This is why Hybrid Cloud is slowly rising in popularity in the enterprise sector, with service providers like IBM, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google and RedHat vying for a slice of the pie.
Let’s explore hybrid cloud:
Table of Contents:
The Importance Of Hybrid Cloud
Top Hybrid Cloud Providers in 2019
What is Hybrid Cloud?
Hybrid cloud is a type of cloud deployment where a private and public cloud are used in conjunction with each other. This is usually achieved by a technology connecting the two of them to work seamlessly together.
There can also be more than two clouds joined together in a hybrid cloud model, depending on the needs of those setting up the infrastructure. Moreover, software and hardware resources can be used from any cloud connected on a hybrid cloud architecture, with the effectiveness of this being decided by what software the company chooses to use.
At their base, hybrid clouds bring together outsourced, third-party public clouds and company-owned private clouds to allow for better resource management. One caveat, however, is the fact that a hybrid cloud is only as good as the software supporting communication between the private and public cloud. Without this software, the two would be distinct entities, and cannot function together effectively. Any flaws in the software also quickly become flaws in the architecture of the system.
Upgrading bandwidth or data throughput in a pinch is difficult for private clouds, but easy for public clouds. Similarly, ensuring data privacy and security is difficult for public clouds, but inherent to private clouds.
The Importance Of Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid Cloud is essential in today’s quickly evolving enterprise space, as it gives companies an edge over competitors. For example, a company that is using an on-premise data center is constrained to the computing power that it has on hand. This private cloud is difficult to upgrade at a moment’s notice, as server-grade hardware is not only expensive but is also a part of an ecosystem.
On the other hand, public clouds are easily extensible. With most cloud service providers offering pay-as-you-use options for compute, public clouds are scalable to a very high level. This comes at a cost, with data ownership and exposure being valid concerns when dealing with sensitive data or intellectual property.
However, companies will not want to give up the security and data privacy that is offered by having a private cloud on hand. Moreover, some tasks cannot be entrusted to run on a third-party cloud service provider owing to the nature of the data contained within them.
Learn more: What Is Cloud Storage: Private, Public, Hybrid and Community Cloud StorageOpens a new window
Thus, hybrid clouds bring together the positives of both deployments and allow for easy scaling and flexibility while reducing the risk of data exposure. They also allow for a strategy known as cloud bursting, which allows for companies to quickly scale when the need presents itself.
Hybrid Cloud vs. Multi Cloud
Multi cloud is also coming up as a competitor to hybrid cloud in enterprise settings. Multiclouds, commonly referred to as Polynimbus strategies, can distribute tasks and resources across multiple cloud environments.
Typically, multiclouds use more than one public cloud computing provider to allow for the distribution of various tasks. Flexibility is amplified due to working with different vendors, and redundancy features are also available. A secondary cloud can also be used as a fallback in case of the failure of the primary cloud.
The primary difference between multi-cloud options and hybrid cloud options is intercommunication. Hybrid clouds have a dedicated software or service to ensure resource management and data transfer between private and public clouds. Multiclouds often perform tasks distinctly from one another, and are usually used in circumstances where the clouds provide distinct services.
Learn more: Virtualization in Cloud Computing: Hardware, Software, Desktop, Data & MoreOpens a new window
Top Hybrid Cloud Providers in 2019
Let’s take a look at the ways IBM, AWS, Azure, Google and Red Hat are leveraging the space:
IBM
One of the more established players in the space, IBM provides a customized hybrid cloud solution for enterprises. They provide public and private cloud solutions separately, with the hybrid cloud bringing together both aspects. They also have considerable market share in mainframes in their IBM Z lineup, allowing customers to create an on-premise and public cloud hybrid.
IBM’s public cloud offers support for Watson AI, blockchain and IoT. Their private cloud, as mentioned previously, has an option to be deployed on IBM Z mainframes with baked-in support for features like containerization (an alternative to total machine virtualization). Their hybrid solutions are a mix of both these offerings, depending on what the client is looking for.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
The leader in cloud services provides a robust array of hybrid services. They have the largest customizable range of hybrid clouds, developed in conjunction with industry-leading clients and players.
AWS’ on-premise infrastructure experience comes from working with service providers like VMWare, Intel, Microsoft and SAP, allowing for the creation of dependable data centers. They also have a sizeable software stack to allow for extensibility from on-premises solutions.
AWS has solutions for hybrid storage, such as Storage Gateway, RDS, S3 and Snowball, hybrid communication such as Virtual Private Cloud and Direct Connect, and integrated resource management software. This makes it a good fit for a company looking to go the hybrid route.
Learn more: What is AWS: Services, Hosting, Pricing, and CertificationsOpens a new window
Microsoft Azure
Azure also provides hybrid solutions for enterprise customers, with support for hybrid apps being included in the deal. Moreover, there are also comprehensive offerings for reliable networking, data, identity, security and management. The service also features an easy way to connect to on-premises networks using a VPN gateway.
Azure also offers the ability to run applications in a hybrid format. Using Azure hybrid cloud, companies can run applications in both Azure and Azure Stack. The architecture also allows for company-specific solutions to be implemented.
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
GCP has a dedicated hybrid cloud platform known as Anthos. Announced as Google Cloud Services Platform, Anthos focuses on using Google technology such as Kubernetes to enable hybrid solutions. Anthos Migrate also allows for the conversion of workloads into Kubernetes or other VMs.
Apart from Anthos, Google has also partnered with Cisco to offer specific hybrid cloud solutions. Cisco takes care of ensuring private cloud infrastructure, and has developed Istio, a networking technology for hybrid cloud, in conjunction with Google.
Google also provides consulting services for setting up on-prem cloud solutions, along with finding the best fit cloud solution for a company’s needs.
Red Hat
Red Hat offers many products for cloud solutions, such as OpenShift. OpenShift is an open-source Kubernetes platform that allows for a “set it and forget it†approach to hybrid cloud. The platform offers automated installation and upgrades throughout the software stack in the container, along with universal and quick deployment of code.
Red Hat provides a platform that is geared towards DevOps and long-term support for cloud tasks. It also works well with cloud service providers such as Azure, AWS, GCP and Alibaba Cloud.
Hybrid Cloud Benefits
As mentioned previously, a hybrid cloud solution allows for flexibility in resources, as well as the privacy and security offered by private clouds. Along with this, it offers other benefits, such as:
Enables Cloud Bursting
Cloud bursting is a term used to denote outsourcing high-performance tasks to a public cloud while preserving the private cloud for mission-critical tasks. An example of this would be if an e-commerce company was facing a boom due to the holiday season. Cloud capacity would need to be scaled up to ensure smooth performance for the end user.
In this scenario, running and maintaining the website can be assigned to the private cloud owing to its high-security nature, while managing customers and orders can be ‘burst’ to the cloud for processing. This overcomes the problem of scalability in private clouds, while still maintaining security.
In such scenarios, companies will only pay for what they use at that second, removing the need for specialized architecture to be built up just for high-volume periods. It is both cost-effective and secure.
Learn more: What is Cloud Computing? Private, Public and HybridOpens a new window
Helps in Testing New Applications
If a new application is being tested, hybrid clouds can be used to gauge how many resources the application will use in a real use case. This will reduce the need to add infrastructure to an on-premise solution, while ensuring that the application is tested to the fullest extent.
In the event of the application not being successful, the public cloud compute behind it can easily be switched off without great loss to the company. In comparison to paying up-front, it is a much easier and more cost-effective way to test applications dependably.
Facilitates Adaptability and Future-Proofing
Hybrid clouds are also adaptable to any future workload changes. They can easily allow for the addition of computing power as the needs of the company evolve, and can scale to a massive extent. Moreover, if any changes are required to company workflows or products, they can easily be adapted for use in the cloud by simply adding more power.
This is also useful in the use cases of cloud bursting, with spikes in workload requirements being taken care of by public cloud resources. Hybrid clouds also help in slowing down the process of companies’ hardware infrastructure getting outdated. As public cloud service providers update their server farms with cutting-edge hardware, cloud computing will evolve over time with marginal cost to the consumer.
Upgrading purely private clouds, on the other hand, is an expensive task, as server hardware is priced high. In a hybrid setting, it is possible to extend the lifespan of the private cloud by offloading tasks to a public cloud and not overloading the on-premise solution.
Helps Comply With Regulation and Improves User ExperienceWith the need for GDPR and similar compliances rising, it is important to consider the fact that using a hybrid cloud solution will ease the process by a significant margin. The architecture mitigates the risk of non-compliance, as the cloud service provider will be responsible for the data stored on their servers.
This means that companies can store large amounts of non-regulated data in the public cloud, while maintaining data that requires compliance on-premise in a private cloud. This reduces compliance strain on the organization while maintaining industry best practices.
In addition to this, hybrid clouds can also help companies serve their users better. Users greatly benefit from having cloud servers near their location, and a hybrid cloud ensures that fast loading times are available to the user in any location.
Hybrid cloud servers near a user’s geographical location will also be compliant with local regulation, which makes per-region compliance a breeze for multinationals.
Hybrid Cloud Challenges
Talking about the challenges of adopting hybrid cloud Rags Srinivasan, Senior Director of Growth Verticals, Seagate TechnologyOpens a new window , says, “Hybrid cloud strategy offers the best of both worlds for customers. The challenges fall into three areas:
- Where to Start: While it is easier to stand up a webscale app in the public cloud with just a credit card, enterprises need good understanding and access to skilled resources to stand up a private cloud. Not all enterprises can build all the skillset in-house. Working alongside strategic partners who provide better building blocks that are ready to scale up is key.
- Investments: Private cloud infrastructures pay off over the lifecycle, especially when managing at scale. But it does require an initial investment. Again, working with strategic partners will help them achieve public cloud like economics without the overhead.
- Management: Continuing to operate a hybrid cloud infrastructure with seamless orchestration requires better tools and automation.â€
Even as hybrid cloud seems to be the perfect fit for your organization, there are some factors to keep in mind before taking on this solution. These include:
Interoperability Between Cloud Vendors
In case of using more than one cloud vendor, it is important to ensure that they are interoperable with each other. Not making sure of this is one of the major ways companies encounter friction in hybrid cloud solutions.
Be it storage, resources, communications or monitoring, making sure everything works seamlessly should be one of the primary focal points of designing a hybrid cloud solution. Workflows and data flow must also be checked to remove pain points.
Managing Billing Costs for Services
Another factor to consider in the process of building hybrid cloud services is the management of various billing costs. As many cloud service providers charge on a sub-second basis for services and API calls, billing turns out to be quite challenging for companies.
On top of this, managing costs for both on-premise solutions and multiple cloud service providers tends to get difficult quickly. Spending must be closely monitored, and cloud bursting or outsourcing costs should ideally be permissioned.
Managing Talent and Resources
When setting up a hybrid cloud today, most vendors offer consultations for customized solutions. Even though they charge a consulting fee, they are able to identify the needs of the company and provide a hybrid cloud solution. However, more and more companies are moving towards hiring their own talent for this process.
This is a difficult task owing to the relative novelty of the cloud market. Finding a cloud solutions architect for hybrid cloud will allow for not only a good fit for the companies’ needs, but also the capability to upgrade in an informed fashion. Finding the talent for this task is easier said than done, and upskilling employees to work with cloud is also not an easy task.
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The Future of Hybrid Cloud
Even as multi-cloud seems like the most popular option today, enterprises are moving to hybrid cloud solutions en-masse. A report by LogicMonitor, a SaaS-based performance monitoring system, showed that around 44% of them are looking into using public cloud. This, in addition to the existing dominance of on-premise architecture, is sure to bring more hybrid cloud adoption to the market.
The rise of technologies such as containers are also paving the way for greater adoption of hybrid cloud infrastructure. Using containers, an application can be run as its own virtualized machine, which means that it is separate from the rest of the cloud. In addition to this, they are also easy to deploy and replicate, making them a natural fit for hybrid cloud tasks.
In addition to this, hybrid cloud solutions from existing on-premises providers such as IBM increases trust in the ecosystem, while enabling a large number of companies to move to hybrid cloud solutions.
What do you think the future of hybrid cloud solutions will be? Let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you.