The Advantages and Disadvantages of Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud is an innovative cloud computing solution that enables you to combine on-premise, private cloud, public cloud, and other third-party cloud services.

A hybrid cloud allows consumers to deploy workloads in the public cloud or private on-premise infrastructure and move between them to meet changing costs or computing needs. In other words, a hybrid cloud provides a wider range of data deployment choices and greater flexibility.

For example, an enterprise may host highly critical workloads in a private on-premise cloud and deploy less-sensitive applications or data in a public cloud, allowing it to get the best out of both worlds.

Many Companies Prefer Hybrid Cloud Models

In a 2020 survey, 89% of the participants said they would prefer hybrid cloud models since they are more beneficial.

In particular, the respondents said a hybrid cloud provides flexible and consistent environments for services like data processing, analytics, and integration.

However, a different study found that 33% of organisations would require support in management capabilities, including performance analytics and monitoring, positioning a management service provider as essential to delivering and deploying a hybrid cloud environment.

How Does a Hybrid Cloud Work?

A hybrid cloud is based on the concept that you can combine your private on-premise infrastructure and a public cloud to deploy and manage your workloads.

Therefore, you have the freedom to choose the best deployment depending on storage, performance, and computing power needs.

For example, you can move a resource-intensive workload from your resource-constrained on-premise infrastructure to a public cloud where you can scale resources on-demand.

But hybrid clouds can be hard to build and manage since you need the expertise to architect your private cloud with suitable networking, storage, and compute hardware to be compatible with the chosen public cloud.

The Hybrid Cloud Benefits

1. Highly Flexible and Scalable

A private cloud may have limited resources and provides minimal scaling and resource provisioning ability.

On the other hand, consumers can deploy unconstrained storage and compute instances and other related services.

Still, they may require workload migration from the on-premise infrastructure to the public cloud. With a hybrid cloud, shifting and scaling your workloads is easier if the private on-premise infrastructure has similar services and instances to the public cloud.

You can use the private cloud when necessary but provision additional resources from the public cloud to address resource and computing inadequacy.

2. Facilitates Compliance

Public cloud environments often store your data in foreign countries, which may complicate compliance with essential data protection and cybersecurity regulations.

In addition, some compliance laws may contain regulatory restrictions on where you can store your workloads and data.

A hybrid cloud allows you to operate personal workloads, store data in your private cloud, and move it to or from the cloud, depending on the regulatory landscape.

For instance, you can collect customer personal data in your private cloud, sanitise it to ensure compliance with data protection laws, and leverage the powerful computing power of public clouds to process or analyse it.

3. Effective Cost Management

A private cloud infrastructure promises more control over your data and workloads but deploying and managing on-premise data centres requires a substantial investment of personnel, funds, and equipment.

 It also puts a ceiling on the number of resources you can provision to run your workloads. On the contrary, a public cloud is cost-friendly and does not involve investments or maintenance requirements.

Thus, when the local demand exceeds the private cloud’s capacity, you can provision cost-effective resources from the public cloud to meet the demands. Public clouds can also eliminate the hardware costs associated with on-premise infrastructure. This simplifies the management of your IT’s operational and capital costs.

4. Enhanced Security

Application and data security in the public cloud is a primary concern for many companies due to multi-tenancy security risks and the fact that cloud providers are responsible for securing the consumers’ cloud environments but rarely for security incidents.

Hence, many enterprises prefer retaining their data/applications/workloads on-premise to protect them and ensure compliance with existing regulations.

A hybrid cloud allows you to gain more control and oversight over your data’s security through the private cloud infrastructure while enabling you to access and provision the public clouds’ computing power.

5. High Performance

Hybrid cloud deployment is usually not faster than a multi-cloud or public cloud environment. Still, it permits consumers to optimise the infrastructure, reducing latency and increasing bandwidth for faster data transfers.

In addition, a hybrid cloud can permit you to utilise edge computing to ensure high performance when running resource-intensive workloads.

Furthermore, while many users share the public clouds’ resources, you can configure your private cloud to utilise resources more efficiently to fasten the processing time.

Disadvantages of Hybrid Cloud

The advantages of the hybrid cloud model make a compelling case for why you should migrate, but there are some disadvantages you should be aware of before making a move.

1. Complexity

Firstly, the complexity of hybrid clouds is a headache for most organisations and often requires the expertise of proven cloud service providers.

In addition, it can be challenging to deploy the private cloud software stack, which requires a cloud provider to build the services and resources for each stack and comprehend the public clouds’ services and resources to ensure interoperability, alignment, and integration.

2. Difficult to Secure & Configure

 Hybrid clouds are hard to secure and configure.

For instance, when migrating to a hybrid cloud, you must implement, configure, and manage the access controls, authentication measures, encryption protocols, and firewalls for private and public cloud networks.

In addition, the security configurations for both environments must be consistent and complement each other, or else security configuration mistakes may expose critical workloads and data to attacks. As such, it is recommendable to seek the expertise and experience of a cloud or managed service provider to ensure robust security.

3. Troubleshooting

 Lastly, organisational IT teams can find it difficult to identify the root causes of problems in a hybrid cloud and mitigate them appropriately.

Troubleshooting a hybrid cloud requires a detailed log analysis and forensics investigations to pinpoint and address a problem.

Many in-house IT teams may be out of depth when troubleshooting hybrid clouds.

Hybrid clouds are complex since they integrate public cloud services and your on-premise infrastructure causing challenges in investigating a security incident or other problems. Cloud service providers have the tools, experts, and experience to monitor your hybrid cloud and remediate problems to protect your workloads.

Adopting the Cloud with Cloud Geeni

Cloud Geeni cloud experts can simplify your adoption process of a hybrid cloud to help you exploit the benefits described here.

We specialise in deploying private cloud infrastructure to meet your computing and business needs.

Partnering with a managed services provider who values your business as much as you do is key to successful cloud migration.

If your business requires an in depth look into legacy systems or applications before considering cloud migration, Cloud Geeni offer a  no obligation audit of your current IT infrastructure to equip you with valuable knowledge you can use to inform future decisions.

Request a call from a Cloud expert using the button below and start your cloud adoption journey today.