Many modern organizations support their businesses with a legacy, on-premises IT environment. They have typically implemented systems that address the needs of their customers and employees over several years. At one time, these solutions were precisely what was needed to maintain business operations and compete in their respective market sector.
Company decision-makers often face significant challenges in ensuring this infrastructure meets evolving business requirements. Systems that were once effective solutions may no longer be sufficient to support the business and drive competitiveness. An organization can find itself unable to run mission-critical processes and meet customer expectations efficiently, but may be reluctant to migrate its complete infrastructure to the cloud.
A hybrid cloud environment provides a practical solution to many of the issues faced by companies relying solely on legacy technology. It may be time for your business to consider adopting a hybrid cloud infrastructure. We will examine five signs that are excellent indicators of the need for a solution that incorporates and modernizes your existing environment by leveraging the cloud.
What is a Hybrid Cloud Environment?
A hybrid cloud environment combines on-premises infrastructure, private cloud services, and public cloud solutions into a comprehensive and unified IT environment. The objective is to integrate these diverse environments so applications and data can leverage the best option to meet performance, business, or regulatory requirements.
A hybrid cloud environment comprises at least two of the following three components.
- A company’s on-premises infrastructure, including servers, storage devices, and networks, implemented in its data center, serves as the foundation of a hybrid solution. Organizations may utilize some of these legacy solutions to handle sensitive workloads or run business-critical processes that require low latency when designing a hybrid infrastructure.
- Organizations may migrate a subset of their environment to a private cloud environment dedicated exclusively to their use. The infrastructure is often virtualized, offering companies more control and security than a public cloud solution.
- Public cloud solutions offer multiple advantages, including cost efficiency and rapid scalability. Third-party vendors such as AWS or Microsoft provide these services.
A hybrid cloud solution integrates these environments with APIs and connectivity tools. Applications may be architected to run parts on-premises and parts in the cloud. Teams should be able to move data and workloads seamlessly and securely between the environments to address costs and business requirements. Companies choosing a hybrid cloud approach can optimize specific IT processes by selecting the most effective platform.
Your Company Requires More Scalability and Flexibility
Most companies address their current business requirements when designing an on-premises IT environment. Organizations should provide a mix of systems and solutions that they can comfortably support with in-house resources and technical skills. Unfortunately, problems may arise when business requirements and objectives change.
A business may need to scale its infrastructure to handle growth or evolving customer demands. It may be difficult or impossible to provide the necessary resources in the limited space of an on-premises data center. Companies can miss significant business opportunities due to the inability to scale quickly and efficiently.
A hybrid cloud solution enables a company to easily address fluctuating workloads without investing heavily in new hardware. Some businesses, such as retailers, may have seasonal spikes that only require additional resources for a limited time. They face a tough decision between over-provisioning hardware to handle the spike or potentially losing customers when they cannot meet increased demand.
Companies implementing a hybrid cloud environment can leverage the cloud’s virtually limitless scalability to effectively handle changing requirements. They can expand resources when needed and revert to a smaller footprint when demand wanes. Teams can right-size their infrastructure to optimize performance with minimal up-front investment.
Organizations can achieve additional flexibility by supporting a mobile workforce, which enables them to capitalize on business opportunities quickly. A cloud solution lets your company deliver applications over an internet connection so that employees can work from any location.
You Need Enhanced Security and Regulatory Compliance
Organizations that process regulated data, such as protected health information (PHI), may be required to store the data on-premises or in an isolated, private cloud environment. Companies cannot meet compliance standards by utilizing shared, public cloud resources. However, the hybrid cloud provides the flexibility to store sensitive data securely while leveraging advanced technologies such as analytics and AI.
Your company may need to improve its cybersecurity posture to address today’s complex threat landscape, but it lacks the requisite technical skills. Migrating select applications to the cloud can strengthen security without hiring additional staff or purchasing new hardware by leveraging the vendor’s capabilities.
You Support a Complex Legacy Environment
Your business may rely on complex legacy solutions that are not easily migrated to the cloud. You can still utilize a hybrid cloud environment by migrating select applications to the cloud while maintaining your on-premises infrastructure. The hybrid approach enables gradual modernization while ensuring that all business requirements are met.
You Need to Accelerate Your Development Process
Companies can leverage cloud-native tools to speed up their development process, quickly building new applications that capitalize on emerging trends and business opportunities. Teams can utilize advanced technological solutions that are beyond the capabilities of on-premises resources, providing the business with a substantial competitive edge.
You Want to Control Costs
Your company may be spending too much on public cloud resources or on maintaining in-house servers. Decision-makers can implement cost-efficient workload placement to optimize their IT budget by migrating some processes to the cloud while still supporting on-premises applications. Over time, companies can expand their cloud presence by rearchitecting applications to run efficiently in the cloud.
VAST Helps You Get There
VAST’s technical team has extensive experience in all aspects of on-premises and cloud infrastructure. We can help you design and optimize a hybrid environment with a comprehensive assessment of your existing systems and data resources. Our strategic partnerships with the major cloud providers give us the insight to find the best combination of private and public cloud solutions to complement your on-premises environment.
Get in touch and discover how VAST can help you leverage the cloud without compromising your sensitive data and mission-critical applications.
