What is Hybrid Cloud?

In today’s digital landscape, many businesses consume a hybrid cloud solution without even realising it. This raises a key question. Are people aware of what a hybrid cloud solution is and, how it can benefit their business?

Every business sees digital transformation differently and depending on your requirements, there are specific technologies that will better support you with a Hybrid Cloud solution in place.

Is your head up in the clouds trying to understand what exactly is a hybrid cloud solution?

To put it simply, a hybrid cloud is any mixture of public, private, and on premises services. There is no certain ratio requirement, no specific technology, and no specific combination that your company needs to follow to fall in this category. It merely means your company is currently consuming a mixture of services, which automatically means you are working within a hybrid cloud. Technologies, storage manufacturers, and virtualisation vendors provide a variety of tools that support flexible workloads within the cloud. Staying connected and transferring workloads can be made simple with a hybrid cloud. Therefore, virtually nothing can get in the way.

Public cloud

Public cloud platforms are hyperscale environments fully managed by the public cloud provider, enabling any member of the public to subscribe and consume services in a heavily automated and portal-driven fashion. User-friendly, efficient, and evolving services, are definitely the way forward.
Microsoft Azure, one of the many examples of a public cloud solution, is a growing collection of integrated cloud services for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services It provides software, platform, and infrastructure ‘as a service. ’The public cloud supports multiple programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems.

Key takeaways of public cloud:

• Deploy anywhere with your choice of tools
• Build your apps, your way
• Connect on-premises data and apps
• Typically pay per use model
• Flexible, reliable, scalable, and cost-effective

Private Cloud

Private cloud platforms typically leverage the same technology as premise platforms, for example, vSphere virtualisation, but at a greater scale. They mix the convenience of a managed platform with the flexibility of not having to transform your workloads to meet the more stringent requirements of a Public Cloud offering.

Whilst public cloud offerings are often the default for many organisations and applications, a very real option for some is to utilise a private cloud. Using our experience, methodology and technology to plan, you can migrate and manage applications into the cloud.

Key takeaways to private cloud:

• Higher levels of control and management
• Useful to people with greater security concerns
• Governance, compliance and assurances around data location
• Predictable (and heavy) workloads
• Business-critical applications

However, like every choice, there are issues to carefully consider. But a private cloud, implemented correctly, can still deliver the generic cloud benefits.

On-Premise

With on-premise environments, IT infrastructure, hardware, and software applications are typically owned or leased by the business themselves and hosted on-site or in a location . The owners maintain physical control over the server hardware and software. Some may not want to admit it but, with staff turnover and changes in business models, owners of equipment can be the grey area. Don’t let this become your problem. Do you know if you’re in control?

Key takeaways of on-premise:

• Data protection – more control over it and its security
• More traditional cost model – CAPEX investment rather than OPEX subscription charges
• Full user control allowing you to modify, expand and consolidate as you see fit
• Allows implementation of your own security policies and procedures
• Allows staff to access hardware at any time, giving greater flexibility over maintenance and auditing

Does the cloud fit?

Hybrid cloud is great for businesses that are on their own personal journey, with Acora providing you the service, you can consume the right amount of each type of cloud for as long as you need to suit your business requirements. Having the ability to support your hybrid transition, with no time constraints, ultimately relieves the pressure of rushing against the clock. Transforming through the cloud should be a seamless process that can be handled by our designated specialists who can ensure it happens.

For most businesses, having a continuous hybrid cloud solution is not the main priority–more important is the consumption-based nature and the single pane of glass service. Having a partner like Acora allows you to kickstart your cloud journey and make it one to remember.

Key takeaways of a hybrid cloud:

• Having the ability to change your consumption model, scale, resilience, and workload flexibility in terms of location.
• Improved performance and reduced latency
• Flexible operations
• Modernise at your own pace

Do you have a very traditional monolithic application?

Traditional applications were typically built using a mixture of SQL, application services and web services – this is what we refer to as “monolithic” – the services are stacked on top of each other and each request passes all the way from the user, into the app and runs from the top to the bottom of the stack and back again. This makes the aging application very sensitive to latency, and typically very expensive and time-consuming to migrate into a public cloud service.

So, cloud caught your tongue?

Moving workloads into the public cloud is a big investment. Adapting to new features such as product licensing, resilience and additional overhead costs for resource availability are all fundamental factors to consider.

There are two options to consider when making the monolith move across – transform which takes advantage of Platform as a service (PaaS) services – capital expenditure (CapEx) heavy, better operating expense (OpEx) or Migrate as is, low CAPEX but heavy OPEX . With private cloud, you don’t need to transform, and is typically more cost-effective and lower impact than the public cloud for monolithic apps. In essence, having a mixture of the two can solve a lot of problems that may occur throughout the journey.

Sounds a lot, right?

What part does Acora play in all of this?

At Acora, we can do the same thing in the private cloud. No transformation work is needed or any restrictions that come with the public cloud. Acora can leverage a different licensing model to deliver a much more cost-effective licensing on that legacy work mode and a far more cost-effective networking solution suited to the business needs.

Transferring on a deadline?

Acora can develop that interim period. This is far more cost-effective than jumping into something just because you’re against the clock. At Acora, we can find a cloud solution that fits you, by understanding your workload and service. Time should never be an issue and we make sure to prioritise the business needs and their journey before anything else.

When is hybrid cloud a good fit?

It happens within every growing business. You get to a tipping point, commercially. In a traditional infrastructure, you make a one-off payment, and then you don’t need to spend anything in the next 3 years – on that journey, you will start consuming a Public Microsoft Azure solution.

When this occurs, you are usually stuck in this place where either it is a commercially or operationally driven tipping point that you have to move everything. The cliff edge is that you can’t have them on-premises anymore and that is why you have to move to the cloud.

Most businesses don’t need the platform, they just need the ability to consume it in the right way. However, by consuming a hybrid cloud solution as a service, you are hosting your workload in the best place it should exist. The hybrid cloud gives you all the options in a relatively simple and flexible offering. You don’t have to worry about moving the workload, Acora will worry about it.

There’s always a silver lining, ready for your hybrid cloud journey?

Acora is here to cater for your hybrid journey, ensuring it is cost-efficient for your budget. Being stuck in a contract isn’t ideal for anyone and Acora is here to make sure that doesn’t happen. Consuming cloud in a hybrid model, won’t be a long-term strategy. It is a stepping stone to help you form where you are today and help you get to where you want to go tomorrow. Therefore, Acora actively offers a hybrid cloud solution to many of our customers. We are interested in helping our customers on their journey to get to where they want to go. Need help on yours? Let Acora guide you to excellence.

If you would like to read more about the services that Acora offers, please head to our services or contact our team today.