Top
image credit: Pexels

Adopting a Hybrid Cloud Strategy: Biggest Advantages and Disadvantages

November 4, 2022

Category:

Today, information is the foundation of business success. However, the companies that can take advantage of this are facing a serious challenge. How do you store the vast amounts of data on which the future of your business depends? Should you rely on the convenience of a public cloud, or would you be better off maintaining total control with a private cloud? Many business owners understand that relying on a single solution, while seemingly less complex, carries certain risks. The best solution is usually hybrid cloud. Not sure which one is right for your business? In this article, we will highlight the pros and cons of adopting a hybrid cloud strategy. 

Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud

Investing in building your own private cloud gives you much more freedom, but it’s not a guarantee of success. Any mistake in a custom cloud environment can severely damage or even destroy your budget and your company’s image. Relying solely on a public service, on the other hand, requires a high level of trust in the provider’s infrastructure. The hybrid cloud computing is a combination of the advantages offered by both solutions. If implemented efficiently, it also allows you to avoid many of the shortcomings.

Hybrid cloud is a model for storing data in an environment that consists of both local and global solutions provided by other companies. For example, an enterprise can host applications and perform demanding computing processes on a platform, such as Google Cloud, AWS, or Azure, while storing critical data in a private cloud, where resources are separated and protected. Remember that no two hybrid clouds are the same, as each organization can freely arrange its data according to its own load forecasts.

Benefits of Hybrid Cloud

Security

A hybrid model allows you to use the highest computing power, while keeping your data under control. A private cloud can be used to deploy applications in a production environment, while also developing and testing applications in the public cloud. If data distribution is well planned, it can provide full performance and 100% protection of key information.

Scalability

In times of increased demand, such as after a sudden surge in the number of application users, you can quickly take steps that will allow your business to fully exploit the full potential of the new situation. With a hybrid cloud computing model, you can quickly move applications and data between private and public areas. This gives you the right space and dynamics for the processes that will deliver the most value to the company at every stage of development.

Recovery

A private cloud is a great place to back up data from the public cloud—and vice versa. It’s also a great bulwark against the damaging effects of errors and random occurrences. Backup allows data recovery in the event of an unexpected failure of the local computing environments.

Flexibility

Combining on-premises and public cloud solutions in a pay-as-you-go model supports business continuity, no matter what. Moving processes to a secondary location in the event of an emergency is easier than ever. Security experts believe that the hybrid cloud model is can effectively secure an organization against unexpected business disruptions.

Biggest Disadvantages of Hybrid Cloud Systems

Accountability

While manufacturers seek to protect their environments, the responsibility for security in a hybrid cloud ultimately lies with the ones bearing the greatest risk—the entrepreneurs or the business owners. The hybrid cloud model requires the end user of the service to be extremely vigilant in detecting vulnerabilities between the two types of clouds. It also requires unification of user authentication processes and reasonable sharing of access to local and public data.

Data Transfer

Moving files between private and public clouds can compromise the flow of data across the network. The transfer to the public cloud is done over the Internet and is therefore partly dependent on the company’s internet service provider (ISP). It is worth taking comprehensive care of the speed of data transfer even before moving to the hybrid cloud.

Wear Monitoring

It may prove more difficult to control the optimization of public cloud usage in a hybrid cloud deployment. A private cloud has limited capacity, but in a public cloud, we only pay for the space we use. While this allows you to effectively save storage space, it comes with certain risks. Poorly chosen storage options and carelessly leaving processes running in the cloud when they are not needed can lead to unnecessary costs. Failure to closely monitor performance can also jeopardize corporate compliance, as data is moved back and forth between internal and external systems, and organizations often trust their public provider to comply with laws and regulations.

Conclusion

If you are wavering between public and private cloud, a hybrid solution may be the best for your business. It allows you to secure all your important company data with a private cloud service on local servers, which keeps access to sensitive data tightly controlled through a combination of SaaS and DBaaS services. At the same time, all your most critical processes take place in a scalable cloud solution from an external provider. The hybrid solution offers the advantages of both technologies: constant Internet access to company applications and complete protection of key data, with the ability to move files between these environments.