Dario ZadroThe last few years have seen a definite explosion of interest in cloud computing solutions for businesses of all sizes, to the point of cloud storage wars bringing down the price and ever increasing data storage.
However, while cloud computing offers several distinct advantages for small to medium sized businesses, some business owners have been hesitant to consign all of their company’s important data to a public storage medium. Still, the advantages of cloud computing are hard to ignore.
In addition to the obvious financial advantages, cloud computing also provides smaller businesses with greater flexibility in the workplace and the kind of computing power that is usually reserved for much larger enterprises.
Enter the hybrid cloud, offering businesses the flexibility and performance of the public cloud while maintaining the security of a private server.
What are Hybrid Clouds?
When people talk about cloud computing they are typically referring to public clouds. With a public cloud, a service provider sells data storage and bandwidth to a large number of subscribers. This allows smaller businesses to have access to the kind of computing power that is usually reserved for large corporations who can afford to build and maintain their own dedicated in-house servers. It’s important to know what to look for in your cloud service provider.
While the financial savings offered by a public cloud environment are substantial, there are inherent security and accessibility concerns. To counter these concerns, some companies have opted to create their own private cloud environments as a way to take advantage of the increased power and flexibility of cloud computing while retaining a measure of data security that is not available in a public cloud.
Hybrid clouds offer the best of both worlds, providing the cost efficiency and flexibility of the public cloud, with the firewalled security of a private cloud. For many small to medium sized businesses, a hybrid cloud offers the financial savings they are looking for without any loss of data security.
Most of us have heard of Amazon Simple Storage Service, or more commonly, Amazon S3. A typical hybrid cloud might use an S3 bucket for archived data but continue to maintain in-house storage for production data.
The Benefits of a Hybrid Cloud
A hybrid cloud solution offers some distinct benefits for small to medium sized businesses looking to expand their computing power. These can be broken down into a few basic areas:
- Best of Both Worlds – Adopting a hybrid cloud solution allows smaller businesses to take advantage of the cost effective public cloud for most non-sensitive operational procedures, while the company’s more sensitive data and critical applications remain safely stored on a private cloud configuration.
- Improved Scalability – The hybrid cloud also provides greater scalability for businesses with their own basic in-house servers. These businesses can expand their computing power via the hybrid cloud, freeing them from the need to purchase costly additional hardware, or expanding their on-site IT team.
- Increased Performance and Agility – With a hybrid cloud solution, businesses can move applications seamlessly between the public cloud and their private cloud. This is a more cost effective way of managing IT demands, as compared to building and maintaining an on-site computer network.
- Increased Accessibility – Like the public cloud, applications and programs in a hybrid cloud environment can be accessed at any time, from any internet ready device. This allows businesses to build a more mobile workforce, and to more easily expand their operations beyond their immediate geographic location.
- Cost Benefit – Businesses have been drawn to cloud computing because it offers the computing power that companies want, at a price that fits their budget. Hybrid cloud solutions are no different. While subscribing to a private cloud, as well as a public cloud, will increase operating costs to some degree, it is still significantly less expensive than building and maintaining an on-site server and computer network infrastructure. Even managed hosting, the go to solution for many smaller businesses, is undercut by the cost of a hybrid cloud solution.
Cloud computing is becoming increasingly prevalent amongst businesses of all sizes looking to compete in a global marketplace. Moving to a hybrid cloud environment offers business owners the computing power and flexibility they need to remain competitive, all while protecting their most sensitive data. If you have been hesitant to join the cloud revolution, the hybrid cloud might be the solution you have been waiting for.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Dario Zadro.
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Interesting take on the hybrid cloud approach. We don’t see some of these things with our customers. Hybrid typically doesn’t provide the savings of a private cloud and in reality, companies use remote backup (exposing all their data), shared files, and single critical apps to the initial cloud space so some of the benefits you list just don’t typically happen.
Until a company moves everything, there are just too many compromises that make a hybrid approach a bad solution. It’s good for the IT Service Provider, but not the customer.
Take another look.
Thanks
Bill
Hi Bill, and thanks for your comment. I agree that a full move is best, but many companies like to “kick the tires” first with their IT solutions.
There are ways to use a hybrid cloud for retention policies and archived data storage solutions that make sense.
Other hybrid options could be to run OwnCloud or a similar service, if there’s an IT staff on site.
Storage is cheap, and many options exist…hybrid is one.
Dario