The power of the hybrid cloud – Leveraging the best of both worlds.
Imagine buying a new version of a product you love. You try it out for a while before realising that the original version had certain benefits that you miss. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to combine the best of old and new into one perfect product? This desire to find a perfect solution is a challenge being faced by many IT managers as they attempt to choose between public and private clouds and is also a topic our customers are confronted with.
At first glance, public clouds offer multiple benefits such as the promise of scalability and availability. Businesses can scale up or down quickly and take advantage of pay-as-you-go models for utmost flexibility and cost savings, but they may experience unexpected cost increases, vendor lock-in, governance problems and performance issues.
Costs are often key motivation in choosing a public cloud. Businesses usually start out with something small scale—a little bit of data and a single application—but this tends to grow to envelop the entire infrastructure. Costs than turn out to be higher than expected and you need more storage and computing power than originally envisaged. What’s more, there can be a greater volume of traffic, meaning the monthly invoices start to eat into the budget.
If a business gives all of its data to one company, that company—whatever it is—suddenly has a huge amount of power and you are at their mercy as they make decisions about prices and what to do with your data. It’s not easy to get your data back, either so companies need a good exit strategy, which they often don’t have.
Some government regulations dictate that certain data cannot be stored just anywhere, which can be a challenge for some public-facing businesses. Commercial companies may want to retain control of crucial customer or tech data—and that might not sit right with you.
Some organisations may face performance issues in the public cloud that lead to delays or other issues that stymie productivity.
Contrary to public clouds, private clouds can be customised and businesses retain full control over sensitive data and compliance requirements, but the lack of scalability and flexibility public clouds are renowned for can restrict growth and innovation.
Benefits of a private cloud:
- Customisation
- Compliance
Benefits of the public cloud:
- Availability
- Scalability
As an IT manager, you strive to achieve the ideal mix of flexibility, control and cost savings. Hybrid clouds give you exactly this combination so you have the freedom to innovate and grow without compromising security or performance. You can move workloads and data between both environments depending on the specific needs per workload or application.
It goes without saying that configuring a hybrid cloud is no easy feat and that’s where we at Bechtle come in, working with you to create a roadmap and implement solutions that meet the unique needs of your organisation.
In a nutshell, hybrid clouds allow you to enjoy the best of both worlds and is a powerful tool that enables organisations to achieve agility, control and agility in an ever-changing IT landscape. Want to find out more about how the hybrid cloud can transform your organisation? Get in touch and discover the possibilities!
Source: Chat with Bing, 01/02/2024
(1) What is a Hybrid Cloud - Benefits & Advantages | Fortinet. https://www.fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary/what-is-hybrid-cloud.
(2) What is Hybrid Cloud? Definition and Benefits | NetApp. https://www.netapp.com/hybrid-cloud/what-is-hybrid-cloud/.
(3) What is a Hybrid Cloud? | Google Cloud. https://cloud.google.com/learn/what-is-hybrid-cloud.