Enterprises looking for a complete digital transformation often unexpectedly find themselves in a hybrid cloud environment. By accessing both private and public cloud technology, enterprises are able to optimize their workloads and make adjustments as necessary. The management of a hybrid cloud environment is controlled using a virtualized orchestration level, making it convenient to move workloads as business needs dictate.
The benefits of hybrid cloud solutions include cost savings, the ability to “burst” to additional public clouds when needed, and a disaster recovery platform that’s fully redundant. You also have flexibility to shift workloads between public and private cloud solutions as business needs or costs dictate.
Even so, it may be challenging to envision how hybrid cloud solutions might work in practical terms in your own enterprise. Consider these examples:
Managing cash flow: Despite the increased demand for implementing digital transformation strategies, many enterprise IT departments are watching their budgets either shrink or remain flat. Hybrid cloud solutions allow you to control costs by only using as much capacity as you require, renting it from a cloud provider, rather than through the physical expansion of your data center.
Protect your most private data: While there are clear benefits to public cloud, many enterprises prefer to keep certain sensitive data such as customer and pricing records close to home. That’s where the hybrid cloud environment demonstrates its advantages; you can house critical data in a private cloud solution while using more affordable public cloud for less-critical data.
Accommodate seasonality or fluctuating workloads: If you’re a retailer, you know the demand on your data center during the holidays. Hybrid cloud solutions solve this challenge by providing the option to add extra capacity through the public cloud. You could run your applications in the private cloud and then expand out to the public cloud when your busy season hits.
Manage the flow of data: Enterprises are just beginning to recognize the massive flow of data coming not just from what’s gathered by their systems, but also through Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and the online behaviors of visitors to their websites. Hybrid cloud solutions allow you to store this data in your private cloud environment and then use the public cloud to make sense of the data.
Augment IT staff with hybrid cloud specialists: When you enlist private or public cloud solutions, you also tap into the talent of the specialists that work for your cloud provider. They are often able to offer insights into your configuration and help you understand how to troubleshoot certain situations.
To learn more about the role that hybrid cloud solutions might play in your organization, contact us at Cloud Source. From Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to data center services, Cloud Source has the options for successful hybrid cloud deployment.