hybrid

/ˈhīˌbrid/
adjective
of mixed character; composed of mixed parts. With hybrid cloud — a mix of on-premises, private cloud and third-party public cloud services ...

Not all businesses today have moved to the cloud yet, and some even refuse to make the move for a number of reasons. They may still view the migration as too painful or complicated, or simply not have the expertise required. For many of our clients, we’ve found that the hybrid cloud model may be the perfect solution — and a good transition solution — because it offers the best of both worlds. It allows your company to make the move to the cloud while keeping some of your data on-premises.

Hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment that uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud and third-party, public cloud services with orchestration between the two platforms. By allowing workloads to move between private and public clouds as computing needs and costs change, hybrid cloud gives businesses greater flexibility and more data deployment options.

“Hybrid Infrastructure is a strategy, not a solution – and it’s more than just cloud.”

— Demystifying Hybrid Solutions and Architectures, Forrester ¹

Is Hybrid Cloud Right for You?

Not everything belongs in a public cloud, which is why ICE Consulting has recommended and installed a mixture of 100 percent, cloud-based networks and also hybrid-cloud services in our clients’ network architectures. Hybrid clouds offer the benefits of both public and private clouds and take advantage of existing architecture in a data center.

The hybrid approach allows applications and components to interoperate across boundaries (for example, cloud versus on‐premises), between cloud instances, and even between architectures (for example, traditional versus modern digital). The same level of distribution and access flexibility is also needed for data. Whether you’re handling workloads or datasets, in the dynamic digital world, you should plan for things to move around in response to evolving needs. Where applications or data live today might not be the best place for them to live over time.

Hybrid Cloud Benefits

Although cloud services can drive cost savings, their main value lies in supporting a fast-moving digital business transformation. The primary benefit of a hybrid cloud is agility. The need to adapt and change direction quickly is a core principle of a digital business. Your enterprise might want (or need) to combine public clouds, private clouds, and on-premises resources to gain the agility it needs for a competitive advantage. Here's an example:

Hybrid cloud computing enables your enterprise to deploy:

• an on-premises private cloud to host sensitive or critical workloads
• a third-party public cloud provider to host less-critical resources, such as test and development workloads.

According to an article in the Enterprises Project ² (a group of CIOs discussing the future of business and IT):

“The various stats and forecasts for cloud speak to our increasingly hybrid world: There’s no one-size-fits-all story in these numbers. Rather, IT leaders have an increasing number of appealing options for their environments across private cloud, public cloud, and traditional data center infrastructure.” 

At ICE Consulting, we completely agree with the above statement. We’ve found that the main challenge with hybrid cloud computing is the construction and maintenance of the private cloud itself, which requires substantial expertise from a very knowledgeable IT staff and cloud architects. We have that expertise since we’ve been building cloud infrastructures for more than 10 years. Cloud technology is all about making your business more responsive, scalable, and competitive.

2020: The year during which combined IT infrastructure spending on private and public cloud will eclipse spending on traditional data centers

— Research Firm IDC.

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