Hybrid cloud computing unifies private, public, and on-premises IT infrastructures to form a single flexible, cost-effective IT infrastructure. The hybrid cloud provides orchestration, management, and application portability across these environments.
What is hybrid cloud computing?
A hybrid cloud is an IT architecture that incorporates workload portability, orchestration, and management across multiple cloud environments. Hybrid cloud computing delivers a unified operating model that manages application workloads across both environments. Allowing for seamless movement of applications from private to public cloud and vice versa as business demands change.
Hybrid cloud computing enables organizations to fulfill their technical and business objectives more effectively and efficiently than public or private cloud. According to IBM, enterprises get up to 2.5 times more value from a hybrid cloud than a single-cloud, single-vendor strategy.
How does hybrid cloud work?
Hybrid cloud architecture is a variation of the traditional on-premises data center/cloud hybrid approach. Initially, the focus was on converting part of a company’s on-premises data center into private cloud infrastructure and then connecting it to public cloud environments hosted off-premises by a public cloud provider. This was done using a prepackaged hybrid cloud solution or sophisticated enterprise middleware to link cloud assets across environments, and unified management tools for monitoring, allocating and managing those resources from a central console.
Hybrid cloud computing has evolved, moving beyond merely connecting physical infrastructures and being more concerned with the portability of workloads across all cloud platforms. It’s also focused on automating the deployment of those applications to the most suitable cloud environment for a given business objective.
Organizations modernize legacy apps and create new applications with cloud-native technologies as part of their digital transformations. They’re developing or upgrading applications to employ the microservices architecture, breaking apps into smaller, more loosely coupled, reusable components concerned with specific business activities. They’re also putting these apps in containers, which are lightweight executable units that include only the application code and virtual-machine operating system dependencies required.
Public and private clouds no longer exist as physical “locations” to connect. Many cloud providers now provide public cloud services that run in their customers’ on-premises data centers and private clouds hosted off-premises, which have long been hosted exclusively on-premises.
Furthermore, infrastructure virtualization, often known as infrastructure as code, allows developers to create these enclaves on demand using any computing resources or cloud resources located behind or beyond the firewall. Since cloud computing is becoming increasingly popular, getting good performance out of your data in real-time has never been more important. This becomes even more crucial in the era of edge computing, allowing applications to run faster by moving workloads and data closer to where the actual processing occurs.
As a result, modern hybrid cloud infrastructure coalesces around a unified hybrid multicloud platform that supports cloud-native application development and deployment across all cloud types. It provides a single operating system across all environments and a container orchestration platform to automate app deployment across cloud environments.
Cloud-native development allows developers to take monolithic apps and convert them into units of business-focused functionality that may be deployed anywhere and used in various applications. A typical operating system allows developers to incorporate any hardware dependency into any container. Developers have greater, set-it-and-forget-it control over container configuration and deployment, including security, load balancing, scalability, and more, across numerous cloud platforms thanks to Kubernetes orchestration and automation.
What are the hybrid cloud’s benefits?
Hybrid cloud architecture is one of the most prevalent infrastructure designs today. It allows for simultaneously utilizing on-premises servers and cloud services. Hybrid cloud computing offers many advantages for organizations:
Application governance
Organizations can use the hybrid cloud computing approach to decide where applications reside and where hybrid computing takes place. This option is vital for improving privacy and ensuring compliance for regulated apps.
Management
Both on-premises and cloud solutions are used in hybrid cloud computing. Applications, databases, and components, on the other hand, are managed under a single data management framework, allowing for interoperability.
Developer productivity
Agile and DevOps methodologies may be more successful when employed on a unified hybrid cloud platform, which can help organizations expand Agile and DevOps adoption and enable development teams to develop once and deploy to all clouds.
Automation
Cloud-based applications frequently include more powerful connectivity and automation capabilities than on-premises software. Hybrid cloud systems allow users to utilize these capabilities. This makes it easier to plan for future full-cloud implementation by providing IT managers a sense of what may be possible with automation once everything is moved to the cloud.
Compliance and security
A unified architecture allows enterprises to utilize cloud security and regulatory compliance technologies while delivering security and compliance across all environments. A well-designed, integrated and managed hybrid cloud can provide the same level of security as on-premise IT infrastructure.
Infrastructure efficiency
Developers, IT operations staff, and project managers can use microservices to optimize spending across public cloud providers, private clouds, and cloud vendors. The hybrid cloud also aids organizations in implementing new value by allowing them to connect cloud services to data on the cloud or on-premises infrastructure more quickly.
What is the difference between hybrid cloud and multi-cloud?
Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud are cloud deployments that include more than one cloud environment. They differ in the types of cloud infrastructure they use. The term “hybrid cloud” refers to an infrastructure that mixes two or more types of clouds. On the other hand, a multi-cloud environment combines various clouds of the same type. Multi-cloud deployment is a hybrid cloud that incorporates more than one public cloud.
How to effectively utilize hybrid cloud?
A hybrid cloud is an ideal option for a variety of circumstances. The following are examples of how hybrid cloud computing may be effectively utilized.
A hybrid cloud enables a public cloud that is rapidly scalable and widely available for dynamic workloads while leaving more volatile or sensitive tasks in a private cloud or on-premises data center.
It’s always a good idea to minimize the amount of data available on public clouds. Organizations may store sensitive financial or customer information on their private cloud while using a public cloud to execute the rest of their business apps.
It’s beyond unlikely for any corporation to continuously handle big data at a high rate. Instead, organizations utilize highly scalable public cloud services while also utilizing a private cloud to safeguard sensitive big data and keep it behind the firewall.
A hybrid cloud is an excellent approach to migrating to the cloud gradually. Organizations may put some of their workloads on a public cloud or a small-scale private cloud to learn what works best for their business. They can expand their cloud presence by utilizing public clouds, private clouds, and hybrid clouds.
The hybrid cloud computing allows companies to use public cloud resources for short-term projects at a lower cost than their data center’s IT infrastructure. This way, businesses don’t waste money on equipment they won’t need for long.
Hybrid cloud solutions let organizations match their real data management needs with the public cloud, private cloud, or on-premises resources that can best fulfill them.
Unless an organization doesn’t simply require a public cloud solution or just a private cloud solution, it’s best to go with the hybrid cloud approach and combine the benefits of both.
Hybrid cloud use cases
Hybrid clouds are utilized in many different practical ways nowadays by enterprises:
Legacy app support
Although many tools, applications, and resources may be moved to the cloud, some require on-premises infrastructure. Hybrid cloud computing enables businesses to develop their hybrid cloud solutions while still benefiting from the flexibility of migrating to the cloud at their own pace.
Workload migration
A hybrid cloud solution might be a transitory setup that allows you to move to a more permanent cloud. In some situations, an organization’s cloud migration might take months. A hybrid cloud approach to transitioning allows for phased movement and rollback while still conserving time and minimizing or even eliminating downtime.
Development lifecycle
Resource needs will vary throughout the development lifecycle. Certain assets may be required during the test phase that will not be needed until after beta or even launch. These resources can scale up appropriately depending on the demands of each stage in a hybrid cloud environment. It’s possible to adapt quickly as new requirements emerge without replacing hardware or changing settings.
Disaster recovery
Hybrid cloud solutions allow private and public disaster recovery tailored to an organization’s specific requirements. This leads to a simplified method that reduces local storage space and bandwidth consumption while improving the backup process—ensuring an efficient and quick recovery of locally stored proprietary data.