After the 2008 financial crisis, many enterprises, as well as small and medium-sized businesses, slashed their information technology (IT) budgets. As firms became more budget conscious, IT directors were forced to make do with fewer resources, yet meet the demand for more computing power– high-speed connectivity, data-intensive applications, mobile workforce and other needs.
As firms scramble to recreate their technology departments, increasingly more companies have redirected a portion or all of their IT resources to cloud computing. The cloud allows firms to use hardware, applications and files over the Internet.
Cloud options
Business owners have three options for cloud computing technology: public, private and hybrid. Public cloud provide firms scalable and elastic IT capabilities—infrastructure, platforms or applications. However, there is no guarantee from services provider regarding the location and storage of data in the cloud.
Increase concern over security, operational issues and data compliance challenges became a big issue with public cloud. To address these problems, businesses migrated to private clouds, which consist of resources available solely on a virtual private network.
Private cloud give firms more control and supervision over business processes, and the highest security level for isolating sensitive data. However, private cloud solutions require a huge investment in infrastructure, maintenance and management.
What is hybrid cloud computing?
Hybrid cloud provides businesses a combination of public and cloud resources, which makes it more cost-efficient, affordable and very secure. Hybrid cloud solutions segment each business task is processed in the appropriate cloud.
A hybrid cloud network requires a minimum of one public cloud and one private cloud. Large hybrid network combines multiple private and public clouds to meet the demand. A hybrid cloud computing solution allows companies to strike the optimal balance between scalability, flexibility, performance and operational functionality. In addition, it reduces the Total Cost of Ownership for IT resources.
Benefits of hybrid cloud computing
Businesses are attracted to hybrid cloud solution because it addresses concerns about security and costs. It allows companies to split business processes and direct each process demand to the appropriate cloud. Here are the primary benefits offered by cloud solutions.
- Flexible business operations – Today, companies routinely run multiple business applications and processes that vary in nature. Many tasks are associated with the day-to-day aspects of running a business and others work with sensitive data. Business functions that do not require critical data can use a public cloud and mission critical tasks can use a private cloud to run the project.
- Optimized IT costs – Companies can reduce costs. Resources can easily be configured to run business processes on the public or private cloud. Since the bulk of the business process are not mission critical, the operational outlay is significantly reduced by scalable resources offered by the cloud.
- Improved security – Companies have a major concern about the integrity and security of data on public cloud. Hybrid clouds offer a more secured environment for your data and business processes. Applications work seamlessly between the different environments—at reduced costs.
- Enhanced performance – Firms can realize maximum output from business processes by optimizing their available resources. Highly scalable hybrid networks offer agility and companies can improve service level agreements as well as minimize downtown.·
Hybrid cloud solutions continue to develop at a stunning pace. Companies moving to hybrid cloud technologies must overcome the challenges of dependency on IT and managing a network dependent of both private and public clouds.
Partnering with an experienced service provider to manage your cloud computing needs can eliminate outages, enhance redundancy and ensure your network operates at the highest performance level possible.