What are hybrid cloud solutions?

Hybrid cloud is a data and computer system storage solution that combines an on premise data centre or private cloud with a public cloud network such as Microsoft Azure, which allows the sharing of data and applications across networks. Organisations use hybrid cloud solutions to provide their business with a network that is specifically tailored to their needs.

The benefits of a hybrid cloud solution

Over the years I have seen many versions of hybrid cloud, but no matter which definition of hybrid cloud I’ve seen, the benefits have consistently been the same. The general principal is that when a business or organisation’s computing and processing demand increases beyond the on-premises capabilities, businesses can use the cloud to instantly scale capacity up or down to handle excess capacity. It also allows them to avoid the time and cost of purchasing, installing, and maintaining new servers that they may not always need.

Why do businesses choose a hybrid cloud solutions?

There are many additional reasons over and above capacity requirements that a business might choose a hybrid cloud approach, typically these are meeting regulatory and data sovereignty requirements, maximising on-premises technology investments, addressing low latency and edge workloads, and strengthening resilience and business continuity.

At Webporch , we support a number of industries that work with highly sensitive data, such as banking, finance, charities and healthcare. For these businesses the hybrid cloud was their best option. It allows the flexibility for certain types of data to be stored on-premises while allowing other maybe less sensitive data to be stored on the cloud. In this kind of hybrid cloud architecture, organisations gain the flexibility of the public cloud for less regulated computing tasks, while still meeting their industry requirements.

What has been interesting over the last few years is that the regulations stipulate that data is to be held using on-site storage, but many businesses find hybrid cloud security to be superior to that of their on-premises datacentre because of the always-up-to-date features such as automated data redundancy, high availability, disaster recovery, and cybersecurity. Meaning business data is almost always safer with a hybrid solution. I suspect that this is one.

If you’d like support finding the right cloud solution for your business, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Or visit out cloud services page where you can find out more.

Tom
CTO