What is hybrid cloud computing?
Everybody know that cloud computing represents one of the most important tools fostering digitalization, especially within companies and structured organisations. But it gives its best when it comes to hybridization: hybrid cloud computing is a mixed computing model based on a combination of public and private cloud services and on-premise infrastructures.
Hybrid cloud computing works by interconnecting separate cloud environments, on which company’s data and applications are located. This allows to easily migrate workloads, if needed. The interconnection between different cloud environments takes place through specific ways, such as LAN/WAN (Local/Wide Area Network), VPN (Virtual Private Network) and API (Application Programming Interface).
The hybrid cloud computing system manages to offer key qualities like flexibility, versatility and efficiency, meeting the most important needs of every company. This model also guarantees to cut management and maintenance costs of connected systems. Hybrid cloud computing supports and accelerates business digital transformation strategies, also providing companies with solid guarantees in terms of cyber security, regardless of where data and applications are located. Indeed, building hybrid cloud environments allows users to maintain control over sensitive data while increasing the availability and effectiveness of specific services and applications.
What’s the difference between private cloud and public cloud?
A private cloud is a cloud computing environment in which the hardware and software are both owned by a single company, in full control and responsibility for the infrastructure. This type of cloud provides high levels of security, control and flexibility and is ideal for organisations whose data and applications require the best of privacy. A private cloud can be physically located in the company’s local data center, otherwise it can be hosted by a third-party provider but with limited access to authorized users only. Private cloud systems have higher costs and limited scalability.
A public cloud is a cloud computing environment where hardware, software, storage and other key services are provided by a remote third-party provider. This kind of infrastructure serves multiple customers. Some of the best known public clouds are Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and SalesForce, as well as most of the e-mail servers. The main advantage of public cloud systems is the lower cost compared to private cloud solutions, but they usually lack efficiency in terms of security and reliability.
5 key advantages of hybrid cloud computing
Once clarified the differences between private cloud and public cloud environments, it is easier to move on and understand the main advantages of hybrid cloud computing.
There are five fundamental principles:
- Flexibility and scalability, as hybrid cloud computing allows businesses to scale up or down their resources as needed. This agility gives users proper flexibility to respond quickly to company’s and customers’ needs. Hybrid cloud infrastructures make possible using public cloud resources for handling non-sensitive workloads, while sensitive data and critical applications can be kept in the private cloud;
- Cost optimization, as hybridization allows to use cloud services according to the actual need of balancing workloads, resources and storage and maximizing efficiency. Hybrid cloud computing helps organizations optimize costs, providing the most convenient cost-effective infrastructure where public cloud resources are adopted for cost efficiency, whereas private cloud resources provide better security.
- Security, as hybrid clouds give organizations more control over data and services, as they can use switch from public to private clouds and other way round, enabling to keep control over sensitive data and applications. This ensures compliance with industry-specific regulations and data governance policies, for example GDPR;
- Data recovery and backup, as hybrid cloud computing facilitates efficient data saving, endurance and recovery and minimizes downtime for threats and attacks;
- Resource management, as hybrid cloud systems enable organizations to monitor and manage workloads seamlessly across the hybrid cloud environment through a centralized view over both public and private cloud platforms. This allows to manage hybrid infrastructures more efficiently, optimizing resource allocation and improving overall performance.
Data and expectations about hybrid cloud computing
Hybrid cloud computing is going to be a growing phenomenon across the digital transition era, thus companies should learn how to best leverage such environments.
According to the analysis conducted by Gartner:
- 60% of Infrastructure & Operations heads will implement at least one hybrid cloud use case by 2025 (a figure tripled from 20% in 2022);
- 65% of application workloads will be optimal or ready for cloud delivery by 2027 (up from 45% in 2022);
- 15% of on-premises production workloads will run in containers by 2026 (up from less than 5% in 2022);
- 35% of data center infrastructure will be managed from a cloud-based control plane by 2027 (from less than 10% in 2022);
- 60% of data center infrastructure teams will have relevant automation and cloud skills by 2027 (up from 30% in 2022).
For what concerns the future expectations about hybrid cloud computing, the most exciting prospects refer to possibility to enable wide supercomputing activities in cloud and, above all, the development of Gaia-X, Europe’s digital cloud ecosystem characterized by data and information transparency, portability and interoperability.
