Hybrid Clouds – What Are Its Features And Benefits For Corporate IT Systems
Hybrid clouds are rightfully considered one of the most relevant trends in the context of the development of corporate IT systems. Today, this technology is growing much faster than other cloud storage formats. According to a study by Mordor Intelligence, the U.S. hybrid cloud market will exceed $125 billion by 2025. And according to IBM forecasts, more than 98% of American enterprises will use this format in the near future.
Content:
1. What are hybrid clouds? What is their operating principle?
2. Hybrid cloud architecture
3. History of development of corporate cloud systems
4. What is the purpose of a hybrid cloud?
5. Advantages and disadvantages of a hybrid cloud
6. Summing up
Given the popularity of this topic, we decided to talk about it in our next article. From it you will learn about what hybrid clouds are, how they work, who needs them and why, what advantages, disadvantages and applications they have.
What are hybrid clouds? What is their operating principle?
Hybrid clouds are a hybrid cloud delivery model that uses a flexible mix of private and public cloud resources. This technology involves the use of cloud systems of both the same and different types, including those from different providers.
Hybrid systems include a range of possible combinations of private and public clouds. For example, here a private cloud can be combined with a public one, a public cloud with a local infrastructure, or a local infrastructure with a private cloud.
Thus, there are a fairly large number of options for the use of such technologies. Client companies can independently build and modify the systems they need, dynamically distributing tools between different components depending on current needs, tasks and workload.
Most of these solutions involve free movement and data exchange within hybrid cloud systems - namely, between its external and local platform. Effective and efficient interaction of all components of the environment is achieved through data virtualization, as well as the use of different connection protocols: VPN (virtual private network), WAN (wide area network) and SD-WAN (software-defined WAN), API, etc.
A hybrid cloud is most often chosen by businesses that want to combine the reliability and security of a private cloud with the availability, flexibility, and scalability of a public cloud.
Hybrid cloud architecture
One of the most important features of hybrid operating systems is their flexibility, which provides users with a large selection of placement options. Companies can store different types of data in such a cloud, providing specific security standards and access levels for each of them. An example of a hybrid cloud architecture is the following three-tier system:
- At the first level is the private cloud, which hosts frequently accessed files, documents, and other types of data. The task of this level is to ensure maximum performance and speed for efficient daily work of users (employees of the client company).
- At the second level of hybrid systems is a public cloud, it stores the data that does not require frequent access to them. In addition, it can be used as a backup data store for the first-tier cloud.
- Finally, at the third level of the OS, there is another public cloud, which hosts an archive or any other data that is irrelevant for everyday work. Often, for these purposes, they use the cloud with the lowest cost of deployment and minimum performance, using it for long-term storage of archival materials.
The history of the development of enterprise cloud systems
The first stage of growth and development of cloud systems for business fell on 2008-2013. At that time, this market had just begun to develop, so large companies did not yet risk trusting their data to cloud services, fearing for their security. In addition, in those days, the cost of corporate use of cloud infrastructure could significantly exceed the cost of local systems. However, every year the market has steadily expanded and become more customer-oriented.
The second stage of corporate OS development began in 2014 and continued until about 2017. It was characterized by the so-called period of "corporate euphoria", when client companies realized all the advantages of cloud systems and, in some cases, expected too much from them. Many cloud service providers took advantage of their euphoria and began to actively promote their technologies, promising maximum flexibility, reliability, functionality and a host of other benefits.
The third stage in the history of enterprise cloud systems began in 2017 and continues today. Its main feature is the rapid growth in the popularity of hybrid clouds and other combined IT infrastructure. The requests and needs of large companies are constantly growing, and their implementation requires a more flexible environment than purely private or public operating systems can offer. All this brings hybrid technologies to the fore, making them the most promising solution at the present time. The best-known hybrid OS providers these days are Amazon Web Services/Amazon WorkSpaces Alternatives, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure.
What is the purpose of a hybrid cloud?
- Storage of confidential data . It is believed that the public cloud does not protect sensitive data well enough, since its infrastructure is not isolated at the physical level. Thus, the personal information of clients of banking, medical and other institutions should be located exclusively in a private cloud. This can create certain inconveniences with the storage and processing of data. Hybrid operating systems solve this problem by allowing you to store sensitive information in a private cloud and the rest in a public cloud, providing maximum protection and performance.
- Dynamic loads and scaling . Regular updating of tasks and a floating load level require flexible solutions. With a hybrid system, you can use the scalable public cloud for the most demanding workloads. While secondary and less resource-demanding tasks can be transferred to a private cloud. On-premises infrastructure is difficult and expensive to scale, and hybrid operating systems help solve this problem.
- Backup platform . A hybrid cloud is ideal for organizing a scalable data backup system. Using a private cloud for this purpose would be overhead and limit its performance. While the public cloud will allow you to get a vast amount of space for moderate money with unlimited opportunities for its expansion. In addition, the use of hybrid operating systems for backup sites minimizes the risk of data loss.
- Environment for software testing . A hybrid cloud provides developers with an isolated testing ground for new software. With its help, you can get a complex infrastructure that combines the main software with the test one. The flexibility of these systems makes them ideal for the requirements of new products, while simple and fast data migration makes it easy to deploy these programs and applications to the main environment after testing is complete and develop your own process as in a software testing company.
- Working with big data Hybrid OS is the best suited for storing and processing big datathanks to the combination of clouds of different types. In particular, the powerful and scalable resources of the public cloud can be effectively used to analyze big data with maximum performance. Whereas private cloud resources will be the perfect place to work with sensitive big data to ensure it's best secured.
Advantages and disadvantages of a hybrid cloud
Hybrid operating systems have an extensive list of advantages that have made them so popular. Among them are:
- Flexibility and scalability . A wide range of combinations of private and public cloud resources make the hybrid infrastructure highly resilient, providing more options for rapidly deploying any amount of data. A hybrid cloud allows you to manage resources very flexibly, adjusting them to the current tasks and needs of the client company.
- Cost reduction . The use of such systems can significantly reduce the cost of storing and processing data. Companies do not have to build and maintain their own full-scale data processing centers (DPC), overpaying for resources when they are not needed. Instead, they can optimize infrastructure costs by leveraging additional public cloud capacity at peak times or when needed.
- Reliability and safety . A hybrid cloud helps to significantly reduce the risk of data loss and reliably protect confidential data from unauthorized access (for example, personal information of a company's customers). Flexible distribution of resources between several operating systems makes it possible to combine high performance and speed when processing data with an equally high level of data security.
- Versatility . Hybrid operating systems are great for solving various problems in many areas and fields of activity. They can be used both to develop new products and to maintain, support or improve existing ones. This model is actively used by enterprises of all levels - from small startups (who cannot afford their own data center) to large corporations that want to efficiently scale resources and optimize costs.
However, hybrid cloud systems have not only advantages, but also some disadvantages. In particular:
- Integration issues . In some cases, it can be difficult to “dock” private and public clouds with each other, ensuring maximum performance and uninterrupted data exchange. Especially if their data centers use different technologies or have different resource intensity or performance indicators. By the way, the connection of different types of cloud is a potential vulnerability in multi-tiered hybrid operating systems.
- Uneven performance . When placing an IT product in a hybrid cloud, you may encounter the fact that its performance will “float” due to the difference in the capacities of the private and public clouds. Accordingly, this will make the software less stable and worsen its fault tolerance.
- Vulnerability factor . Experts advise carefully choosing a provider of public cloud systems, taking into account the risks of vulnerability of their hardware. Also, do not forget that the more complex the infrastructure, the more serious the consequences of failures in it.
Summing up
A hybrid cloud is a popular and promising format of cloud systems that combines the resources of a private and public cloud within a single infrastructure. Most often, it has a multi-level architecture, flexibly combining different combinations of private and public operating systems. The most famous providers of such solutions today include Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.
Hybrid clouds are actively used for storing confidential data, scaling resources and working with dynamic loads, processing big data, as well as a backup platform and an environment for software testing. Such solutions have both advantages (flexibility, scalability, availability, security, universality) and disadvantages (integration problems, power fluctuations, hardware vulnerabilities).
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