Hybrid Cloud
What is Hybrid Cloud?
A hybrid cloud is the combination of both public and private cloud deployment models. Organizations use the hybrid model to blend their infrastructure on demand.
Scale Computing Resources and Limit Costs
Using a hybrid cloud, an organization can scale computing resources and limit the huge cost of managing spikes in demand. In addition, hybrid clouds give businesses the flexibility to free up local resources to store and run more sensitive data and applications when needed.
Limit Public Access
Hybrid clouds also provide a means for companies to limit the public cloud’s access to their entire data pool by reserving public cloud use for handling overflow only, ensuring stronger cyber security. Furthermore, by capping their use of the public cloud, an enterprise can take advantage of paying for just the resources they need rather than maintaining additional infrastructure that remains idle much of the time.
Hybrid Grows
Not surprisingly, since hybrid cloud computing began, its popularity has grown tremendously and traditional data outsourcing has declined. In fact, the hybrid cloud market is expected to reach $128 billion by 2025 with 98% of companies planning to use the environment.
How does a hybrid cloud environment work?
Businesses use hybrid cloud services by mixing local, on-premises resources with private cloud and third-party public cloud services. An organization splits instrumentation between the three so workloads can move between the public and private cloud platforms as computing needs change.
Fundamentally, a hybrid cloud model works by sharing information between onsite and offsite platforms. Interconnectivity between the platforms is achieved first through data virtualization followed by connective tools and protocols such as APIs (application programming interfaces), VPNs (virtual private networks), and/or WANs (wide area networks).
But the process of managing a hybrid cloud model is much more than merely lifting and shifting applications into the cloud. An IT department also needs to configure resources to enable them to communicate. In addition, there’s the time needed to train users and ensure both successful deployment and maintenance over the long haul that add to the investment.
As such a resource-heavy project, switching to hybrid cloud computing should be carefully considered. While this mixed environment provides businesses with greater flexibility and more data deployment options, it can mean IT departments will struggle to handle the increased complexity.
What are the benefits of using a hybrid cloud?
Changing to a hybrid cloud model changes just about everything about how a company manages data and workloads. IT departments need to prepare to provide answers to how this fundamental transformation in people, process, and technology will ultimately benefit the overall business.
Most companies use a hybrid cloud model to:
- Simplify operations
- Reduce risk
- Increase workload efficiency
- Broaden capacity to meet spikes in demand
- Reduce costs
With all these benefits, a hybrid cloud model increases an enterprise’s overall agility and flexibility, changing the time to offer new services from months to hours. And because developers can iterate, test, and deploy new applications offsite, fewer personnel are required to manage the process. In addition, IT departments can also reduce their on-premises cloud infrastructure, thus saving on major capital investments.
Moreover, with a hybrid cloud model, developers are able to create and modify their cloud infrastructure requirements themselves using software. That power also adds to increased speeds and efficiencies.
How do enterprises use hybrid cloud?
For each enterprise that transitions to hybrid cloud, various types of users deploy different operations to benefit the entire organization.
IT decision makers can:
- Automate the provisioning and management of on-premises and cloud resources
- Enable rapid virtual machine (VM) and container vending
- Accelerate the development process to bring new products to market faster than ever before
- Ensure cloud development self-service
- Turn a VM cluster into a private cloud
- Turn containers and bare metal into private clouds
- Connect to any provider
- Intelligently scale infrastructure
Developers can take advantage of cloud environments that:
- Are fast-moving
- Include streamlined development project workspaces
- Have complete self-service provisioning, tools, and access to a catalog of curated tools, templates, and resources
Chief information officers (CIOs) can improve productivity with hybrid cloud technologies that:
- Are capable of quickly turning up new services
- Can migrate IT thinking away from operations and toward applications
Line of business executives can keep an eye on cost/productivity and use platforms and systems that help them to:
- Directly achieve their goals without constant IT intervention
- Enhance their individual service levels
- Improve the overall health of the business
How can HPE help you modernize with hybrid cloud?
HPE brings agility to apps and data to eliminate complexity and silos and drive speed and flexibility with common tools, processes, and automation. We’ll help you address the non-cloud native apps that are slowing you down and get you on the path to a unified, modern cloud strategy. You can take advantage of many of our solutions to make a clean transition.
Develop a cloud road map to prepare people, processes, and technology for holistic cloud transformation with the HPE Transformation Program for Cloud service.
Shift to agile IT solutions with HPE Pointnext Services. With HPE Pointnext, you get advice on IT strategy to transform hybrid cloud environments, take advantage of AI, and innovate at the edge.
Bring the cloud experience to your non-cloud-native apps with HPE Ezmeral Container Platform. Containerize monolithic applications to improve efficiency, increase agility, and provide portability—rebuilding and refactoring apps that need to move to the cloud.
Manage your ultimate hybrid cloud estate with HPE GreenLake so you can more effectively run, manage, and optimize your entire hybrid estate. Simply point and click to get a single integrated view into the cost, governance, performance, and security status of your hybrid estate, as well as comprehensive compliance capabilities and broader cost insights and analytics.