Cloud computing offers a scalable, flexible way for organizations to manage their IT resources. A hybrid cloud combines resources from different computing environments to allow the sharing of resources. Hybrid clouds may include a combination of public clouds, private clouds and on-premises data centers.
In this article, we’ll explore the different components of an enterprise hybrid cloud, why hybrid clouds can be useful and how organizations can better manage data backups and security when using this infrastructure.
Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Defined
A hybrid cloud architecture can take many configurations, but will include a mixture of public cloud services, private cloud services, and/or on-premises data centers. The exact makeup of a hybrid cloud’s architecture will depend on the organization in question.
Public cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud, offer cost effective, scalable ways to access computing resources. However, these resources are owned and operated by a third party and run on an external network. Private cloud services are internal to the organization (meaning behind their firewall). They may be operated by a third party, but only the organization has access to the network and the resources on it.
Public Cloud
Public cloud services are easy to get started with. They’re highly scalable, can be relatively inexpensive and offer instant access to all manner of computing resources. The cloud service provider manages the infrastructure and often makes it possible to spin up popular services such as a database or web server with just a few clicks.
It’s easy to scale public cloud applications simply by adding new or scaling existing instances if required, and usage-based billing can make doing this cost-effective compared to having to over-provision services to ensure reliability during peak times.
Private Cloud
Private clouds are servers that are owned by your organization and either hosted in your own data center or at a remote data center. Private clouds can offer higher levels of security than public clouds since the hardware is exclusively yours. However, this extra control and security comes at a price in terms of convenience and financial cost.
With a public cloud, you can rent computing time and resources, then release them when you no longer need them. This means your organization is paying only for the resources it uses, and if it experiences fluctuating demand, it needs only pay for extra memory or processing power at times when demand is high.
A private cloud doesn’t offer that luxury. If you’d like to be able to accommodate users during periods of peak demand, you’ll need to over-provision your hardware to cover that. In addition, while some data centers offer managed colocation services, such an option is quite expensive. It’s more common for clients to simply have the data center take care of the physical infrastructure and networking with in-house staff handling maintenance, configuration and security updates. Managing all this can take a significant amount of your IT department’s time.
Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Integration
Hybrid clouds combine multiple public clouds, or some public and private clouds, to create a scalable and flexible infrastructure. Hybrid clouds sometimes evolve organically as a result of changing IT infrastructure requirements, and sometimes they’re a planned development.
Benefits of Enterprise Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid clouds offer several benefits compared to having all of your infrastructure under one umbrella. Many of these benefits are touched on in the Forester report, but we’ll list some here:
- Better business continuity: By hosting with several providers, it’s less likely all of your systems will go down in an outage. With proper cloud backup solutions, any outages can easily be recovered from.
- Increased agility: Organizations are better able to respond to changing market conditions and embrace new technologies if they’re not tied to only one provider.
- Easier compliance: Hybrid clouds give organizations the freedom to choose what’s hosted where, so sensitive data can be hosted behind the organization’s firewall, for example.
- Reduced costs: Having the freedom to shop around for various resources can save an organization a lot of money. Services can be hosted with providers that meet regulatory requirements and offer stability, performance and value for money.
- Convenience for employees: Virtualization is one major benefit of hybrid clouds. Remote workers can connect to cloud services to perform certain tasks, rather than having sensitive data on their laptops.
Challenges of Enterprise Hybrid Cloud
While hybrid clouds offer many benefits, they do present some challenges for IT teams, including:
- The need to manage multiple vendors: Rather than having one point of contact for questions, outages and issues, you’ll need to keep track of multiple vendors.
- Reduced visibility: Instead of monitoring logs and security alerts from one set of services, you’ll have to keep track of services across several portals.
- Potential for hardware costs: If you’re using a private cloud for some services you’ll have to invest in, and maintain, your own hardware.
- Increased complexity: Networking and maintaining backups across multiple cloud services may require more planning and monitoring than having everything under one provider.
- Billing complications: Depending on the agreements you have with cloud providers, you might save money by having multiple services with a single provider.
Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Case Study: Ciox
Ciox needed a vendor-agnostic solution that could support their multi-cloud strategy and provide them access to their data at any moment. By leveraging Veeam’s data management and backup solutions they streamlined their data protection processes to ensure security and availability of critical patient information. Additionally, with Veeam, Ciox reduced downtime, improved operational efficiency and cut costs. Read more about how Ciox is benefiting from Veeam.
The Strategic Advantage of Enterprise Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid clouds are becoming increasingly common as businesses are faced with evolving IT needs. Embracing a hybrid cloud environment offers many strategic advantages in terms of cost savings, scalability and business continuity. However, the complexity of a hybrid cloud can bring some challenges, especially in terms of data backups and security. Veeam can help with these challenges with Veeam ONE.
With Veeam ONE we offer organizations with a comprehensive visibility into their virtual environments and backup operations, enable proactive monitoring of performance, resource utilization and potential issues. This real-time insight helps teams identify and resolve issues quickly, reduces downtime and improves system reliability.
We understand that maintaining a hybrid cloud can be expensive. Especially in the cloud where resource utilization and associated spend often bloats quickly, landing us with bill shock and struggling budgets (which, by the way, was the number one cloud challenge identified). Veeam ONE is also indispensable when it comes to capacity planning and resource optimization. Veeam ONE helps organizations in this regard by providing insights into resource utilization, capacity trends, and forecasting. By analyzing historical data and performance metrics, Veeam ONE enables organizations to anticipate and proactively right-size storage and compute needs, ensuring that sufficient resources are available to meet compliance requirements. Additionally, Veeam ONE’s capacity planning capabilities enable organizations to adjust resource allocation, identify potential bottlenecks, and make informed decisions regarding infrastructure upgrades or scaling. This proactive approach not only supports compliance but also enhances overall operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness. To learn more about how Veeam ONE can help your organization, download a free trial.
For more trends, insights and to orchestrate a plan of attack download our Cloud Protection Trends Report for 2023 and #1 Hybrid Cloud Backup Guide. The future to owning your data on any cloud starts here.
