09/21/2021 | News release | Archived content
Hybrid cloud adoption is on the rise. As companies look to accelerate their cloud journey, it's becoming clear that there are numerous values - and constraints - when blending the use of private on-premise clouds with those of public off-premise clouds. Creating a strategic balance between the two can often yield more favorable results for the business, but it's important to carefully consider the benefits and risks associated with data that moves between public and private infrastructures.
A hybrid cloud environment or architecture combines using a public cloud and a private cloud to deliver or support a service. One application can be architected to take advantage of both types of clouds, forming the basic concept of a hybrid cloud. Using this hybrid model does create complexity that has to be managed, but at the same time, it often increases the application agility and performance. Basically, a cloud hybrid model is a combination of both public and private clouds.
All clouds have the five essential characteristics of resource pooling, on-demand self-service, broad network access, rapid elasticity, and measurable services. The characteristics of hybrid cloud include the five essential characteristics but also allows better management of workloads, improved big data processing, improved data ownership, and improved overall performance.
Hybrid cloud benefits can be tied highly to the management of data. Many organizations are concerned about their data. Their data is the organization's lifeblood; if it becomes compromised or corrupt, the organization is in danger of failure. With a hybrid cloud architecture, organizations can architect solutions that allow sensitive data to be held in a private cloud and non-sensitive data to be stored in a public cloud. The advantages of hybrid cloud storage can improve the overall analytical ability of the organization to run the day-to-day business as well as analyzing the business trends.
Benefits of hybrid clouds include:
When businesses have better control over their data, they also have better control of how decisions are made. Data is everywhere and massive. Timely, real-time management of data is essential for organizational decision support. Besides the management of data listed below, there are other business benefits of a hybrid cloud environment for the organization.
Business benefits of hybrid cloud include:
The disadvantages of hybrid cloud pros and cons will always depend on the organization. Each organization should a have risk management and backup policy. This includes creating risk registers and deciding appropriate actions based on risks that the organization might experience. Listed are a few of the general cons and disadvantages associated with hybrid clouds, though mileage may vary depending on your organization
Cons for the usage of a hybrid cloud solution are:
Disadvantages of hybrid clouds:
Disadvantages and cons are in the eye of the organization. Organizations should partner with external vendors to help with organizational assessments to determine challenges and then create actionable business plans and high-level roadmaps for success.
There are pros and cons to the usage of a hybrid cloud solution. Many of the reasons, either way, depend on the organization's desired outcomes. Companies should assess their risk tolerance and carefully consider how risk is managed. Pros for the usage of a hybrid cloud solution are:
Vendors of cloud solutions make the maintenance of IT components and capabilities easier. Infrastructure is becoming more of a commodity and many organizations can see cost savings using the cloud. Shifting the focus to business strategy and viewing hybrid clouds as an enabler of the business increases agility, competitiveness, and customer focus of the outcomes supported by hybrid cloud solutions.
The usage of Hybrid clouds will continue to grow as the organizational trust of these solutions grows. This will allow businesses to focus on core competencies and innovation so they can maintain an edge over the competition.
Actian Avalanche is a fully managed hybrid cloud data warehouse service designed to deliver high performance and scale across all dimensions - data volume, concurrent user, and query complexity. It is a true hybrid platform that can be deployed on-premises as well as on multiple clouds, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, enabling you to migrate or offload applications and data to the cloud at your own pace.
Traci Curran serves as Director of Product Marketing at Actian focused on the Avalanche Data Platform. With more than 20 years of experience in technology marketing, Traci has previously held senior marketing roles at CloudBolt Software, Racemi (acquired by DXC Corporation), as well as some of the world's most innovative startups. Traci is passionate about helping customers understand how they can accelerate innovation and gain competitive advantage by leveraging digital transformation and cloud technologies.