Hybrid Cloud: The First Step Towards Digital Transformation

The First Step Towards Digital Transformation

Enterprises strive to move away from legacy infrastructures and constantly develop new ways to handle operations. How do they process scattered data in a highly digitized environment? A business may need a unified system to connect and integrate several sub-components. These solutions make the work more effective and increase productivity.

The pandemic has only given a spur to digitization. Now it’s not enough to keep a business afloat. Companies require a move forward and turn to IT as a primary service provider and facilitator for novel strategies.

Now business and IT leaders are thinking about combining on-prem, public cloud, and private cloud solutions. This shared infrastructure should meet the employees’ needs and improve the customer experience. That’s where the hybrid cloud comes in.

The hybrid cloud is a forward-thinking solution for enterprises to boost scalability and flexibility. The hybrid cloud offers significant advantages as a computing environment by sharing data and applications among diverse stakeholders. Let’s look at how the hybrid cloud assists businesses in system integration.

Introducing a hybrid cloud

The hybrid cloud isn’t a separate cloud. It’s a mix of private and public cloud environments, providing the benefits of both solutions. By choosing the hybrid environment, the company combines an on-premise or external private cloud (controlled by a Managed Service Provider) with a public cloud.

How do companies operate within a hybrid cloud? There are three possible options:

1. keeping the computing and storage units in-office and using the public cloud for storing backups;
2. storing data on-premise and carrying out arithmetic, logical, and decision-making operations on an external cloud;
3. or vice versa, rely on the computing power of the on-site infrastructure and store data on the cloud.

Let’s look at the hybrid cloud components and why the combination is better than either public or private cloud.

Public cloud and private cloud comparison

What is a public cloud and a private cloud?

A public cloud encompasses a data center and its services accessible to numerous customers. These are external sources anyone can rent and use through a frontend (graphical user interface, GUI), browser, or API.

You may rent a public cloud in the forms such as:

• Infrastructure-as-a-Service, IaaS: computing power, storage space, network capacity, and hardware (routers, switches, and firewalls);
• Platform-as-a-Service, PaaS: web application development environments;
• Software-as-a-Service, SaaS: software that can be accessed via a browser.

Public cloud providers include small, medium-sized, and well-known companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. These companies provide out-of-the-box services without the need for extensive maintenance or further investment in IT infrastructure from your side.

A private cloud (corporate cloud or internal cloud) is the company’s dedicated IT environment. There, employees have full control, security, and individualization opportunities to ensure services are compatible with the system and no one can access their resources. How can employees enter the infrastructure securely? They may use the company’s internal or encrypted public networks (Virtual Private Network, VPN).

Public cloud vs. private cloud: pros and cons

A public and private cloud isn’t all black and white. Choosing one over another depends on the company’s size and goals. That’s what you should consider while picking both options as a hybrid cloud for the enterprise:

• Availability of the services

  A public cloud unites distributed data centers, and the cloud companies provide all services. Private cloud infrastructure is limited to what the company possesses.

• Scalability

  A public cloud enables you to scale the system to whatever extent possible. It relies on the “pay-as-you-go” concep and only charges you for what you really use. The infrastructure adjusts to your needs because global providers have resources worldwide.

  It’s especially beneficial for season-based traffic peaks. They won’t disrupt the business flow. You purchase a temporary increase in resource consumption and then do not use or pay for them during regular sales volume.

  A private cloud doesn’t mean you can’t expand the company. You can connect additional capacities and ensure compatibility with existing systems according to your needs and requirements.

• Spending

  Public cloud providers upgrade their infrastructure themselves, so users don’t have to pay high investment costs. A private cloud helps you use the hardware and server environment better than traditional IT infrastructures. However, its implementation and maintenance are more expensive than a public cloud.

• Protecting data

  Data protection remains a high priority for various businesses. For example, this topic is acute for online stores. Different platforms upgrade and create better ways to save their customers from reputational and financial losses.

  One of them is Magento. The recently upgraded Magento 2 version provides more security patches, so its customers take Magento migration steps to ensure their online stores’ safety.

  Your data in the public cloud may be at risk. The reason is that you store data within a shared infrastructure. So, if a hacker penetrates someone’s system, yours will have a higher chance of data theft as well.

  So, it’s public cloud providers’ responsibility to protect your data and comply with the latest data protection standards. For example, they’ll handle the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

  In a private cloud, you control who has the right to obtain your resources. You establish security and data protection rules. However, because of this, you need to:

  • follow the latest security standards yourself;
  • hire security specialists;
  • spend time monitoring the system;
  • allocate money to buy security tools to keep up with the highest standards.

• Options for individualization

  A public cloud exists in the standardized (hardware) infrastructure. It’s available to many users, so it’s hard to customize a public service to your specific needs. A private cloud is independent of third parties. You decide what capacities you need and what services to connect.

Why should you consider a hybrid cloud?

The hybrid cloud is about the seamless integration of the public cloud platform with a private cloud. As business requirements change with time, you may alter workloads or data within different cloud units.

The advantages of a hybrid cloud include scalability, lower costs, and more available resources. That’s what a public cloud offers. Yet, if operating on-premises systems is essential, you may still benefit from adding a public cloud to the environment. For example, use it for long-term storage, cloud backups, and reducing the workload on the in-house infrastructure.

However, a hybrid cloud has certain disadvantages. You’ll need to go above and beyond to manage the dispersed elements. Local hardware resources may be scarce compared to unlimited public cloud resources, increasing the risk of downtime.

Is a hybrid cloud popular?

Hybrid cloud solutions have gained traction recently among the available cloud solutions. The Market Research Future report predicts the hybrid cloud market growth of $173.33 billion by 2025. A compound annual growth rate (CAGR) will reach 22.5%. Why does it happen?

Switching to a hybrid cloud concept ensures smooth application and service integration. Such a flexible infrastructure saves you money and gives you a competitive advantage because you don’t have to pick one option.

What you should consider when opting for a hybrid cloud

When deciding to step on the hybrid cloud path, you should determine the goals to achieve, the regulations you need to face, and the level of privacy you can afford. Companies can gain the following benefits thanks to the hybrid cloud:

• faster scalability to connect and disconnect new data storage;
• establishing a flexible cloud structure to respond to the changing demands;
• complying with legal and data protection regulations while remaining in the flexible public cloud infrastructure;
• storing and analyzing massive data chunks;
• operating on a worldwide scale rather than maintaining private clouds or data centers at each location;
• moving workloads to the cloud in stages.

Final thoughts

A growing business has to understand that sooner or later, the existing capacity won’t be enough. The more people migrate to the Internet, the more resources the company needs. How do you prepare for digital transformation? How do you effectively use the budget and at the same time maintain reliable system security? One of the ways to ensure your company can efficiently respond to uncertainty is the transition to a hybrid cloud.

Hybrid cloud technology is all about agility and moving data effortlessly. It improves security, expands data flexibility, and makes software deployments easier.