The Hybrid Cloud

A while ago I have written an article about the types of cloud computing an organization has the choice to adopt, About Private or Shared Cloud and Everything in Between.  For medium sized and small companies and private individuals, the public cloud is the most obvious choice.  Also, as I said before, the public cloud model is the closest to the original dream of computing services as an utility.

However, for the business world, sometimes the public cloud model is not enough, and many large companies who have the internal resources, are building private clouds.  The private cloud allows a business to take advantage of most of the positive features of the model and also giving full control of the infrastructure and security.  However, building a private cloud is not inexpensive, or easy, so not many companies are able to do it.

The answer may be somewhere in the middle: the hybrid cloud.

There has been much talk about the hybrid cloud lately, Garner saying it will be „a major focus for 2012”, and there is quite a bit of buzz on the Internet and among CIOs about it.

It is easy to see why:  the hybrid cloud comes with the promise of delivering cloud computing advantages without drawbacks, giving the user the ability to choose and mix, according to necessity and budget.

So how does it work? The most obvious way is the use of the public cloud for data and applications where security and availability issues are not of the utmost importance for the business, and private for those that are better served from staying on premise.  As usual, a business case has to be presented and the choice carefully made.

But there are many ways public and private cloud can work together, for example use public cloud as a fail-over for the private cloud, or use public cloud for development, test, QA and staging environments and leave the mission critical and sensitive information on the private cloud.

And there are also the possibility of integrating the two, so they work together.  Although this may not be as easy as one would think.

Despite the allure of being in the middle, the hybrid cloud does not have to be considered the automatic answer to all the problems, and careful consideration has to be given to each particular implementation case, always keeping in mind the business requirements. It is possible that the public cloud will do well in a given situation, or a private solution is required.  The choice to go for the hybrid cloud should not be taken lightly, but considered on its own merits.

Photo source: https://www.sxc.hu/photo/699221.