These days, plenty of organizations are migrating their workloads to the public cloud, using cloud services like Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and AWS. But the public cloud isn’t right for every company, and especially not for those that need to maintain tight data security or adhere to strict regulatory requirements regarding how their data is treated.
Those companies can build private clouds that only house their own data – and that has its advantages. It can be completely tailored to the needs of the business, for example, rather than having to be all things to all users, like the public cloud. But private cloud deployments have their drawbacks, too. They can be expensive, and more rigid than public cloud deployments.
Hybrid cloud is the answer. Hybrid cloud combines the best of both worlds: the flexibility, scalability, and low cost of public cloud deployments, with the security and data protection of private cloud deployments. Hybrid cloud can do a lot for your business, from keeping your data more secure, to improving your scalability options, to cutting costs, and more. Let’s take a closer look.
Cut Costs
A private cloud, while offering unmitigated privacy and security, can also be expensive to maintain and update over time. Deploying a private cloud requires having an on-site data center that your enterprise alone controls, and getting one can mean laying out a lot of cash upfront. And while data can be stored on and retrieved from a private cloud in much the same way as it can from a public cloud, a private cloud is limited. There’s a finite amount of data that can be stored on it before you need to buy more servers.
While putting everything on a public cloud deployment can certainly keep costs down, that’s not feasible for all companies – many organizations need more data security than the public cloud can provide. Using a hybrid cloud system allows you to keep your sensitive data security tucked away behind a firewall and in your private data center that only your personnel have access to, while at the same time allowing you to take advantage of the scalability and convenience of the public cloud for less sensitive operations. And because you’re putting less sensitive data on the cheaper public cloud, you’ll save some money.
Increase Security and Help with Regulatory Compliance
Data security is of the utmost importance for many enterprises, not least of all because your industry might be required to follow regulatory guidelines governing what kinds of data need to be kept private and how they should be stored. The user of a public cloud does not own or control-, or even see, the infrastructure of the cloud. Nor is a public cloud provider going to be held responsible for the consequences of a data breach – your organization will be. So it’s much safer to store your sensitive data on a private cloud and keep your less sensitive processes on a public one.
Add Flexibility
The physical data center that houses your enterprise’s private cloud is always going to be limited in its resources. But if you use a public cloud, you can instantly deploy as much computing power and storage space as you need, with fewer constraints on the resources available. A hybrid cloud setup allows you to build in the consistency you need to move back and forth between public and private deployments as needed. You can use your secure private cloud when it’s necessary, and pull extra resources from the public cloud as you need them.
Standardize IT Management
The use of a hybrid cloud deployment can more easily support the standardization of IT processes across both the private and public areas of your cloud. Public cloud providers are coming to understand the needs of enterprises with hybrid cloud deployments, and they’re including integration services that help mesh both private and public clouds together. Your IT staff can make a hybrid cloud setup work faster, by making it easier for data to get where it needs to be, and using edge computing to bring services to end-users and increase the speed of the cloud as a whole.
Hybrid cloud combines the best of both private and public clouds to bring a new level of security, scalability, speed, and efficacy to your business operations. If it’s time to upgrade your enterprise’s computing operations, consider implementing a hybrid cloud deployment. You’ll be surprised at how much smoother things will operate with the extra computing power and security hybrid cloud can bring.
