Why Your Business Needs Hybrid Cloud

By Brian Norman, Director of Technical Solutions and Infrastructure Services

Mar 4, 2020 9:00:00 AM

About 4 minutes

These days, the question is not whether to adopt the cloud but what type of cloud to adopt. An overwhelming majority of companies use some type of cloud, and many have taken a cloud-first approach to their overall technology strategy. Gartner predicted that organizations that don’t use a cloud-first strategy will lose out to their competitors.

When adopting the cloud, companies can choose from private, public, and hybrid models or go with a multi-cloud strategy that involves using multiple cloud services from a variety of cloud providers. According to the 2019 State of the Cloud Report, 58% of enterprises choose to go with hybrid cloud. The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index 2019 found that 85% of enterprises see hybrid cloud as the “ideal” model.

Why is hybrid cloud so popular? Companies need a cloud model that aligns with business goals, and hybrid cloud is flexible enough to fill the bill for many types of organizations.

What is Hybrid Cloud?

Hybrid cloud is like the best of both worlds. A hybrid cloud model combines on-site, private cloud, and public cloud environments in a single cloud solution. Companies can store sensitive data in the private cloud while giving access to client-facing data and applications in the public cloud.

Data can be tiered in hybrid cloud according to frequency of access. Infrequently accessed data can be stored in the public cloud, while mission-critical data can be stored on-premises or in the private cloud. Archiving files in the cloud saves the cost of provisioning and maintaining on-site, physical infrastructure.

Unlike with a multi-cloud strategy, hybrid cloud allows for orchestration between environments. Workloads can be moved between private and public clouds as needs change. Data backups can be synced between on and off-site storage to minimize data loss after an outage.

Protecting Data

Hybrid cloud empowers companies to protect data and achieve seamless business continuity. The model allows organizations to follow the 3-2-1 rule for backup, which recommends that they keep 3 copies of data, store 2 copies using different storage media, and locate 1 copy off-site.

With hybrid cloud, organizations can store backup data in the public cloud while maintaining other copies on-site and in the private cloud. Storing backups in an off-site hybrid cloud environment protects data from breaches and from being encrypted or deleted by ransomware attacks.

For disaster recovery, hybrid cloud enables automatic failover to the public cloud environment. The interoperability of public and private cloud environments allows companies to achieve enviable recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) for minimum data loss and downtime.

Spurring Innovation

Hybrid cloud makes it easier and more affordable for companies to develop applications. For many businesses, designing applications is their bread and butter, but building DevOps environments can be costly and time-consuming. Once development and testing are over, the DevOps environment sits idle, wasting money and other resources.

A hybrid cloud empowers organizations to build application development and testing environments by scaling up public cloud resources. When development and testing are completed, the company can scale back down, paying only for the resources that were needed. Applications can get to market more quickly, giving the business a competitive edge.

The Right Cloud Model With the Right Provider

Hybrid cloud enables companies to be agile by providing them with multiple infrastructure options as they undergo digital transformation. The Enterprise Cloud Index showed that 49% of respondents feel hybrid cloud meets all their business needs.

To match business goals with the ideal cloud model, your business needs to choose the right cloud provider. The ProActive team works with our clients to find the perfect mix of cloud resources and services to meet business goals and challenges. We partner with top cloud providers, including Ensono, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure, to give our customers access to winning public, private, and hybrid cloud options.

ProActive helps companies choose the right cloud model and services to match business goals. Receive a personalized white board session from a certified ProActive infrastructure expert.

Tags: Cloud Solutions, cloud model, hybrid cloud, cloud provider, Cloud