Hybrid cloud can be the ideal cloud model for many businesses. The combination of private and public cloud provides the capacity on demand needed for disaster recovery or cloud bursting. As many as 75 percent of businesses are investigating what the hybrid cloud can do for them.
Obstacles to Hybrid Cloud
Despite the popularity of hybrid cloud as an idea, many companies struggle with the implementation. There are numerous concerns, including:
- Security. For many businesses, keeping data private remains a major reason for keeping data out of the public cloud. This consideration may be misplaced. Most cloud providers can offer environments that are certified to meet security standards, and the business model of cloud providers ensures that they apply security patches with much more alacrity than most in-house IT teams.
- Cost. Cloud is usually expected to be cheaper than maintaining an on premises data center, but there are many decisions that affect the actual cost of cloud services. Because cloud is so dynamic, it can be difficult for organizations to manage and control the cost of cloud utilization.
- Complexity. Migrating to public cloud is complex, but it’s a one-time project. With hybrid cloud, the migration effectively never ends. And the hybrid cloud needs to support data flows in both directions, not just from on premises to the cloud.
- Network. All cloud relies heavily on network connectivity, but bandwidth and latency become even bigger challenges in hybrid cloud. Particularly when the hybrid is intended to support cloudbursting, the network needs the bandwidth to rapidly transmit large volumes of data.
- Resources. The resources to build hybrid cloud aren’t all infrastructure; you need the people resources to complete the project, too. Existing IT staff may be too busy with day-to-day responsibilities to work on a migration project or lack the skills need to manage a hybrid environment.
Overcoming Obstacles to Hybrid Cloud
With the right tools, you can overcome the obstacles to implementing hybrid cloud. Hyperconverged infrastructure such as that from Nutanix lets you build a scalable, manageable private cloud in your data center. Nutanix Beam provides a solution for cloud security and compliance, and can be supplemented with a cloud access security broker for even more control. Nutanix Calm provides orchestration tools to make managing your clouds easier. NetApp Data Fabric helps simplify the challenges of moving data between your onsite and cloud environments.
Working with an experienced partner such as dcVAST enables you to more easily leverage these tools to build your hybrid cloud. With our insight into infrastructure, storage, and data protection, combined with our key vendor partnerships, dcVAST helps you bring together the two sides of a hybrid cloud into an environment that provides flexibility and security. Contact us to learn more about the benefits you can get from building a hybrid cloud.
