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Nervous about the Cloud? Why not try hybrid hosting?

Posted on August 1st 2014

 

Not quite ready for the cloud or need a combination of cloud hosting and physical servers to meet your business needs? Why not try hybrid cloud hosting.

Hybrid cloud hosting is the parallel use of a combination of customer-dedicated servers and public cloud infrastructure to perform distinct functions within the same organisation.

It can provide the security features, performance, and flexibility of dedicated hardware along with the cost savings, utility, and bursting aspects that cloud technology offers.

Benefits of deploying a hybrid hosting solution include:

A good half-way house

Hybrid cloud solutions are considered a good half-way house, as many organisations at the moment are not yet ready to outsource their entire IT operations into the public cloud, although a number of smaller ones already have.

Smaller operations can quite easily rely on the public cloud to host and deliver email, desktop productivity suites, data storage and security services. But complications could arise for those organisations that need to securely manage and store large amounts of data generated from applications like CRM (customer relationship management), ERP (enterprise resource planning) and customer financial information – although this can be done if managed correctly.

A hybrid model can offer the first safe steps into the cloud for organisations that know there are benefits to be enjoyed, but are unable, for a variety of reasons, to move as quickly as others.

Flexibility

Hybrid Cloud Solutions allow organisations to use different cloud delivery services for specific applications. For example, a public cloud may be a more cost-effective service for the computer-intensive task of processing analytics, but the data would remain local, or private, to comply with regulations.

And because a hybrid delivery strategy allows organisations to run applications and services across different clouds, co-location facilities and data centres, a big benefit is that organisations can easily move processes, services and applications from one geographic location to another.

Capacity expansion

Adding capacity on-premises can be high when you think in terms of upgrading power and cooling in a data center to accommodate additional racks or building a whole new data center. A hybrid approach is a viable alternative and doesn’t have to impact existing operations; selecting a hosted cloud that supports bare metal and extending the on-premises network could allow existing technologies, tools and techniques to be reused.

Reduced costs

A very desirable benefit of cloud computing is reduced costs. This is also true for the hybrid cloud. Depending on your business processes, you can configure your hybrid cloud using private and public clouds. As mission critical processes are comparatively fewer, the operational expenditure is greatly reduced by scalable solutions offered by the cloud.

Enhanced security

One of the main concerns of a public cloud is data integrity and security. Hybrid clouds offer extra security to your data. By keeping your data out of the public cloud, companies can add extra security to business processes. At the same time, applications can seamlessly work between different environments to reduce operational costs.

Keeping up with the latest technology

There has been a lot of studies and research done recently which indicate that the use of cloud services is continuing to explode. Keep up with the latest technologies and reap the benefits to your business.

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