Hybrid Cloud Settles In for the Long Haul. Here’s What to Consider Before Migration

The initial wave of cloud adoption saw the rise and rise of the public cloud. Providers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, the Google Cloud Platform made a mark on the global cloud landscape as businesses’ go-to solution of choice. But while the public cloud has its benefits, there are several downsides to companies adopting the public cloud end-to-end. 

This is particularly true if you are in the business of providing essential services or safeguarding confidential data — for example, BFSI, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, utilities, manufacturing, food & agriculture, and the public sector. 

As a result, hybrid-cloud is fast emerging as the recommended solution, more in line with the business goals for several such sectors. Analysts estimate hybrid cloud will soon become the go-to IT environments for organizations. Data from Mordor Intelligence Opens a new window indicates the market for hybrid cloud, driven by rapid digitization, is expected to hit  $128.01 billion by 2025. 

To understand why, let us first consider the different hosting options and the risks associated with the public cloud.

Learn More: Can IBM Win the Cloud Wars After Spinning off Its Legacy Business? 

Public Cloud vs. Private Cloud: Why You Need the Best of Both Worlds 

Public cloud entails that you host your applications, data, and processes (or workloads) entirely on shared resources, including servers and storage. The provider takes full ownership of maintaining the hardware, software, and supporting infrastructure, dramatically lowering your upkeep requirements. 

But several security risks could creep in with this approach: 

• Depending on the SLAs, the cloud provider may or may not take responsibility for securing your cloud workloads. While the platform itself is secure, data in motion may be open to vulnerabilities. Academic researchOpens a new window suggests that public cloud providers may not be living up to the promise of integrity and security when offering secure data services.
•  Recent researchOpens a new window from EU universities suggests that the traditional perimeter-based security approach may not be enough to protect cloud data in a multi-tenant, service-led cloud computing environment. This is a problem as banks, healthcare providers, etc. aren’t aware of exactly what data is hosted in which location, and therefore struggle to manage governance.
• Companies without adequate cloud skills could misconfigure cloud processes, and the shared environment multiplies the risk of a cybersecurity attack. Data Opens a new window from Trend Micro suggests that approximately 230 million cloud misconfigurations occur every day, making it the #1 risk for cloud environments. 

As a result of these risks, 70%Opens a new window of organizations hosting data or workloads in the public cloud witnessed a major security incident in 2019. 

In comparison, the private cloud implies you host your digital infrastructure in an owned virtual environment. This could be internal or externally hosted and managed by a private cloud solution partner. Unlike the public cloud, you won’t be using any shared resources. 

But the private cloud is significantly costlier and more complex than the public cloud. The infrastructure (servers, storage, security appliances, etc.) is situated within the organization’s physical campus or co-located space with the organization taking full ownership. This approach takes a lot of skill and investment to set up and maintain. 

A hybrid cloud model lets you judiciously select from these approaches and assign the best-fit hosting environment to individual applications and workloads. It facilitates the movement of data and applications to/from different environments which has several benefits. 

Learn More: Cloud Strategy: Tech Giants Expedite Hybrid Cloud Approach 

5 Reasons Your Business Needs a Hybrid Cloud Strategy

The benefits of going hybrid are as follows: 

1. Heightened security – This is one of the most significant drivers for hybrid cloud. By hosting your mission-critical applications and high-value or confidential data on non-shared resources, you minimize the risk of an attack. Your internal data governance and cybersecurity protocol will also apply to everything that’s internally or privately hosted, further strengthening your enterprise perimeter.
2. Optimize costs – While the public cloud is probably the most affordable way to go, the hybrid also has significant cost advantages. You host only select applications and processes internally/ privately, spending as little as possible on owning your infrastructure and upkeep services.
3. Assured compliance – Banks, healthcare, and other such large public services providers must be mindful of staying compliant in every region of their operation – such as the EU’s cloud computing guidelinesOpens a new window or India’s rulesOpens a new window for cooperative banks. Hosting all data and processes that come under the purview of regulatory compliance privately is an effective way of reducing the compliance burden. A hybrid strategy will let you achieve this without investing in end-to-end infrastructure.
4. Continued scalability – Private infrastructure is difficult to scale, as any new capability requires another purchase and more upkeep. But with a hybrid cloud strategy, you can quickly scale non-mission-critical and low-risk activities by simply extending your subscription to the public cloud components.
5. Superior connectivity – The nature of hybrid cloud architecture implies seamless connectivity between its different components. This lets you integrate disparate applications and data sources, opening up myriad possibilities for business growth. For example, you could consolidate internal and external data streams to power analytics insights without any bottlenecks.

Learn More: 4 Use-Cases for HR on the Cloud to Keep People Connected and Businesses Resilient 

Planning for a Business-Aligned Hybrid Cloud Strategy

A robust strategy is essential for maintaining interoperability and interconnectivity between applications. This ensures that the hybrid cloud landscape does not become fragmented or fraud with security vulnerabilities. The strategy should include:

• Workload segmentation – Bucket business processes plus data loads into mission-critical and non-mission-critical. Ideally, mission-critical workloads need 24/7 uptime and should be hosted on private infrastructure, with continuous support. Further, there should be little to no dependencies with public resources so that business activities can carry on, uninterrupted, even if there is downtime or a security incident involving non-mission-critical processes.
• Intelligent clusters – A cluster is a group of linked servers for shared resources and centralized storage on the public cloud. By spinning up clusters, you create an internal virtual environment that enables greater uptime without depending on the public cloud. Based on your workload segments, you can leverage Hadoop, Kubernetes, Amazon Elastic, and other container services.
• Target operating model – A target operating model (TOM) encapsulates your to-be-achieved cloud landscape across people, processes, and technology. It defines KPIs like uptime, application scalability, necessary integrations, support SLAs, upskilling needs, etc. TOM helps to navigate the transition to a hybrid environment more efficiently.
• Hybrid cloud partnership – It is advisable to select a hybrid cloud services provider using the outcomes of the first three steps as your RFP. Specialized providers will bring multiple public cloud partnerships and tested configuration expertise that can optimize your costs as well as infrastructure resilience. IBMOpens a new window , DellOpens a new window , and most technology giants have a hybrid cloud offering.
• Hybrid cloud migration – The 6Rs model (Rehost, Replatform, Repurchase, Refactor, Retire, and Retain) can come in handy when migrating to a hybrid landscape, applying one of the six options as per the application/dataset/process’ segment, dependencies, and business need. A dedicated hybrid cloud platform can help to reconcile the full landscape and iron out fragmentations. Finally, make sure there is a centralized governance dashboard to monitor resource usage and costs for all public and private elements. 

Moves in the Right Direction

The hybrid cloud can help companies in BFSI, healthcare, the public sector, etc. achieve their business outcomes without security risks or massive overheads. 87%Opens a new window of healthcare organizations have identified the hybrid cloud to be their ideal operating model. In banking and financial services, organizations like the TSB BankOpens a new window are partnering with IBM Services to bring about hybrid cloud transformation. 

These are all positive moves. As the global digital landscape reaches greater cloud maturity, businesses need to redefine their approach from the generic, “cost reduction first” mindset. 

Hybrid cloud can help get there, bringing together the best of both worlds – the security and control of private infrastructure with the public cloud’s scalability and resilience. 

Would you recommend the hybrid cloud as the way forward for large companies with a sizable compliance burden? Comment below or let us know on FacebookOpens a new window , LinkedInOpens a new window , and TwitterOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!