Balancing act: hybrid cloud use cases
Public clouds provide significant capability such as high availability and scaling workloads when demand for computing power is elastic. But in most cases, a hybrid cloud strategy can fulfill cost containment concerns as well as address critical data privacy issues especially when working with the public cloud.
A hybrid cloud configuration is best when:
Meeting compliance requirements
Many countries have mandated data localisation or data residency laws that require all data about a citizen’s transactions or interactions reside within their borders. The use of cloud services across borders is therefore prohibited by these regulations.
But compliance does not preclude the enterprise from locating parts of the cloud application that process the data, including stateless web servers, from operating in a public cloud environment to boost compute performance and availability.
Such as hybrid cloud strategy stores the confidential information in a local data centre while processing the data in a public cloud application.
Disaster recovery and cloud redundancy
A geo-redundant private cloud ensures companies are not vulnerable to disasters or other catastrophic events that may impair data services throughout their global network. But setting up a redundant cloud that is also dispersed from the primary data centre location (for added precaution) is very expensive.
A hybrid cloud strategy amortises the expense by running the organisation’s production environment in a private cloud but configuring the public cloud for data recovery. If a disaster strikes, network administrators can spin up a new instance of the application in the public cloud since the data has been replicated there. Known as a ‘warm disaster recovery’ scenario, this will increase availability and save costs significantly.
Workload testing
A hybrid cloud configuration is the ideal environment for testing new applications when it is challenging to determine the workload capacity required to run it optimally. Using the public cloud to simulate real-world usage and workload patterns will allow for an easy on-ramp to a hybrid configuration once the kinks are worked out. This is an ideal approach for capital-intensive deployment of applications that would be prohibitive in a private cloud environment.
Self-service IT provisioning
This option automates IT services by enabling users to deploy applications they require either to the public or private cloud without help from the IT department. For more control, policy can dictate and limit the end users access to specific public or private clouds but hybrid cloud architecture will ensure maximum flexibility to respond to internal requirements.
Getting your cloud mix just right
For all its benefits, a hybrid cloud configuration is not without its challenges. There are inherent difficulties involved in managing two independent cloud environments as well as working with various contractors and cloud service providers. Communication lines must be clear and effective for a hybrid strategy to deliver optimal results or it will turn into a problem for the organisation.
Choosing the right vendors therefore is an important step in a successful hybrid cloud strategy including selecting a cloud management service to ensure adequate control of both private and public clouds. There will be trade-offs in integrating the internal cloud environment with the public cloud but only the organisation can decide if it is the best approach for its business.
Speak to us to find out more.
¹https://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-industry-insights/cloud-computing-trends-2019-state-cloud-survey
