A hybrid cloud is composed of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models. A hybrid cloud can also consist of multiple cloud systems that are connected in a way that allows programs and data to be moved easily from one deployment system to another.
A hybrid cloud model gives organizations the flexibility to put their workloads and data where they make most sense, deploying the right blend of public and private cloud services while addressing availability, performance, and security challenges. This model also often requires IT organizations to reduce complexity and manage strategic, financial, operational, and security risks that result from the need to manage multiple applications across multiple environments for multiple users.
A hybrid cloud offers many benefits to the enterprise. These benefits include
A platform for gradual cloud adoption: Cloud adoption is a multistep journey. Designing workloads for the public cloud often requires organizations to redesign applications, understand new models and new terminology, and modify code to allow applications to control resources. A hybrid cloud allows customers to start by taking advantage of dedicated servers and virtualization using existing applications and resources, eventually evolving the infrastructure by moving the right workloads to a public cloud over time as needed. The flexibility to move specific applications between platforms enables IT organizations to transition to the cloud at their own pace and only with the workloads that make sense.
A platform for rapid innovation: A hybrid cloud allows organizations to move at the speed of DevOps. With access to massive public cloud computing power fully integrated into existing infrastructure, new system enhancements and application updates proceed more quickly through the software life cycle, allowing businesses to get products to market faster. Developers can focus on developing products instead of waiting for IT to provision resources. IT can access resources as needed instead of tying up huge amounts of IT budget in seasonal projects.
Support for performance, security, and availability: A successful hybrid cloud model addresses the performance, security, and availability limitations often experienced in public cloud services. An on-premises private cloud powered by all-flash storage eliminates performance and availability concerns while putting the IT department in control of data security and governance.
Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): Although the public cloud offers a lower-cost entry point, it is often not the most cost-effective approach at scale.
A hybrid cloud model can weave cloud efficiencies into existing IT investments that aren’t quite cloud ready while providing the flexibility to tap into public cloud resources as needed.
Prevention of vendor lock-in: With so many vendors now offering public cloud services at various levels and prices, portability of workloads across the cloud is critical. The right hybrid cloud model has workload portability built in.
Scalability: An enterprise can temporarily increase capacity in no time using a public cloud when business needs cannot be met by the private cloud. This is possible using cloud bursting, where an application running on a private cloud bursts to a public cloud when the demand for computing capacity increases.
The major disadvantage of the hybrid cloud is that the initial setup cost exceeds the cost incurred in a public cloud. Another disadvantage of a hybrid cloud is that if it is not picked correctly, there can be compatibility issues between the private and public cloud.
