Enterprises enjoying the benefits of the cloud are diving in deeper to implement a hybrid cloud environment. While hybrid cloud environments do offer a high level of control, flexibility, and security, they also deliver a new level of complexity. This complexity tends to come in one of the following five challenges of hybrid cloud management:

Integration: Creating a cohesive environment from private and public clouds requires a deep understanding of where to place workloads, how to build the infrastructure to support it, and implementing a consistent set of processes and policies. Not all applications will best fit in a cloud environment, and determining how best to move processes with the right patterns and tools is complicated for even seasoned cloud IT specialists. If hundreds of applications are being managed, building the right infrastructure can be challenging.

Hybrid Cloud Management and Monitoring: A public cloud provider will generally have a native management and monitoring tool, and some of these are available using external application programming interface (API) services. The difficulty is that these tools still need to be integrated with on-premise monitoring and management. Generally, the enterprise will not want to utilize two different management systems, so many providers of on-premise tools are looking for ways to integrate public cloud providers for more streamlined management options.

Network Infrastructure: Network latency and overall performance is one of the key focal points for hybrid cloud management. The network design needs to account for bandwidth needs, management of private and public clouds, the locations of branch networks, and the requirements for each application. Network developers need to understand the scalability requirements of applications and how that impacts the infrastructure.  

Security: This is another area of challenges when it comes to hybrid cloud management because any transfers of data need to be handled within a strict set of policies and procedures. Using identity and access management consistently across private and public clouds requires a highly coordinated effort to meet both security and compliance requirements and to ensure no gaps are present in the hybrid cloud design.

Along with basic security, enterprises particularly in the health care or finance industries may have high hurdles to clear when it comes to compliance. Knowing where data resides and who has access can be a challenge in any cloud environment and only gets more complicated in a hybrid cloud setting.

Hybrid Governance: The structure needs to include considerations like on-demand services, rapid elasticity, cloud network access, and resource pooling. Teams can begin with practices that apply to governing task automation. They can also improve governance with an efficient communication plan that effectively informs employees of policy.

If your enterprise is struggling with hybrid cloud management, or if you’re considering a hybrid model and would like guidance in creating the right management framework, contact us at Cloud Source.