Hybrid cloud: the best of both worlds?

Modern life flows through networks. Our communications, our business transactions, our media consumption and our social lives all rely upon them. As our dependence on networks has grown, so has the burden we place on them. Users now expect to be able to access personal or business data from any location, on any device and businesses are still looking for ways to make this expectation a reality. One thing is certain: yesterday’s relatively simple network structures are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Cloud computing has a big role to play in the transition to the new era of networking. As a technology, cloud has moved rapidly from vision to reality thanks to the huge potential it offers businesses.

The power of the cloud
In essence, cloud computing refers to the delivery of hosted services or applications over the Internet. There is little doubt that cloud computing will have a huge impact on the way that companies set-up their IT resources over the next few years and beyond. After all, with data volumes growing at 40% annually and IT spending only increasing by 5% per year,1 companies cannot realistically rely on traditional infrastructures to keep pace with this data explosion.

As a result, subscription based cloud models are becoming an attractive option to IT managers and businesses. Cloud computing allows IT organisations rapidly scale their computer resources, giving them the ability to flex and adapt to changing business requirements. Cloud can also help to reduce complexity in the on-site environment and ease the workload of internal IT staff.

However, cloud computing is not a single concept. Cloud structures can be tailored and deployed differently from company-to-company to meet the specific needs of the organisation. IT teams must therefore decide, not just if cloud is worth investing in, but exactly what type of cloud solution makes most sense for their organisation.

Choosing the cloud model that’s right for you
Cloud computing can be loosely broken down into two categories; public and private. The difference between the two lies in who maintains control and responsibility for servers, storage, and networking infrastructure and ensures that application service levels are met.

In public cloud computing, some or all aspects of operations and management are handled by a third party service provider. This “as a service” approach makes resources such as applications and storage available through the Internet and the HTTP address of the service. Public clouds offer a number of advantages; such as low costs and scalability. They can be extremely useful for companies needing to deal with large amounts of data or for those that don’t have the resources to manage their own infrastructure. However, concerns have been raised about how secure these public clouds are, and where the data they hold is physically stored; something that can be a major issue from a regulatory perspective. As a result, public clouds are often thought of as being suitable primarily for non-sensitive data or applications.

Alternatively, private cloud solutions offer companies a very different set of benefits. The private cloud model is based on dedicated data centre environments which are owned and maintained by the organisation using them. Private cloud presents the opportunity to create the virtualised IT enterprise architecture of the future, on an organisation’s own terms, while maintaining the flexibility and scalability of cloud-based applications. Unlike the public cloud, private cloud computing requires your own build–and-sustain efforts, making them impractical for smaller enterprises. The major benefit of private cloud is that it brings issues of reliability, data security, system protection, compliance and governance under the IT department’s control, while still delivering greater flexibility, scalability and agility.

While not feasible for smaller organisations, for big enterprises, private clouds deployments can often be easier to manage than public clouds, since they can leverage existing knowledge, processes and practices. Therefore it is likely that a significant part of the growth in cloud is expected to come from private cloud rollouts, as enterprises look to gain the scalability and agility of cloud, without ceding control.

However, both private and public clouds come with different advantages and disadvantages. And many companies may require elements of both. A third option that combines the best of both models is therefore becoming increasingly popular; hybrid clouds.

The best of both worlds?
Hybrid clouds integrate and utilise the qualities of both public and private clouds concurrently, allowing companies to take advantage of both types of clouds and enjoy the benefits of each.

For instance, private clouds can offer fantastic bespoke and secure data operations but can be very costly. A company may therefore choose to use public clouds for some of its everyday non-sensitive data to keep costs low, but draw upon its own private cloud when handling other types of data.

However, a hybrid cloud is only as strong as its weakest link. Although using the combination of private and public clouds can reap fantastic rewards for organisations, it does come with a new set of considerations and decisions that need to be made to avoid costly errors or outages.

The first thing to consider is does your organisation really have the resources and skills to effectively implement a hybrid cloud approach? Hybrid clouds require not only time and financial resources, but also technical expertise within the company. The organisation needs to have an in-house technical expert with knowledge of how the cloud infrastructure – both public and private elements – works so that it can be effectively managed.

Secondly, basing your data or applications in the cloud will always raise reliability concerns. As data no longer “exists” as a tangible asset internally, businesses cannot afford for any part of the cloud infrastructure to go down or become inaccessible - irrespective of whether the fault is with the cloud provider's network or the enterprise's internal network. Companies therefore need to consider how to deploy a reliable cloud structure so that mission critical applications and data are always available.

A mindset change within the IT department is also required. IT must transition from an infrastructure-oriented approach to a service-oriented approach for service delivery and management. This includes providing a catalogue of standardised IT services and supporting self-service and automated provisioning of standardised services. Users are unlikely to care where their data is stored, as long as they can access it when and where they need it. Therefore, IT must make the experience of both public and private cloud seamless for the employee by integrating IT processes and tools end-to-end and being able to support multiple service sourcing options.

An effective hybrid cloud model also requires IT to perform continuous resource optimisation. This means managing service levels across applications and virtual infrastructure, striving for full utilisation of the IT infrastructure and making best use of public and private resources based on business needs.

Lastly, the issue of security must be addressed. At a basic level, security measures need to balance the probability of a threat occurring, the impact of a security breach, and the cost of implementing countermeasures. To avoid putting your company’s data at risk while keeping costs low, a middle ground needs to be established between what data is placed within the security of private clouds and what is more suitable for public clouds. Of course, public clouds are not necessarily insecure – but you do need to manage the risk. It is also critical to know where your data will physically located. This is vital because regulations can differ significantly and some countries restrict the movement of data due to privacy and security issues. This all means that vetting your public cloud suppliers rigorously is absolutely essential. Make sure they can meet strict service level agreements regarding uptime and privacy and get as much visibility as you can.

Evolution, not revolution
Of course, organisations cannot simply forget their existing infrastructures and jump into the cloud. In reality, most IT teams will have to manage a complex and highly diverse networking environment that includes private or hybrid clouds, public cloud services, virtualised resources, and traditional dedicated physical resources.
Businesses therefore need to take an evolutionary — rather than a revolutionary — approach. That means identifying key target applications and infrastructure that are suitable for the move to the cloud – either private or public – and then developing a strategy to introduce this model incrementally.

Finally, it is important to remember that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach when it comes to the cloud. For organisations that want to balance the benefits of both public and private infrastructure, hybrid cloud can be a fantastic option. However, IT teams must assess the specific requirements of the business, identify their priorities and assess the risks and benefits holistically before deciding on what approach is right for them.

1 http://www.brocade.com/downloads/documents/infographics/fabric-facts-factoids.pdf