As hybrid clouds become more popular as companies shifted to this type of computing environment, there is still undiscovered information regarding this for businesses' sake of improving their IT infrastructure.
Discovering Hybrid Clouds
Hybrid clouds are an en environment for cloud computing that merges two or more cloud types. In this case, a private cloud and a public cloud. Both will connect through encrypted and secure communication channels.
While other computing sources are managed internally by companies, some are still provided by third-party cloud service providers. By combining the two computing clouds, it will appear for the user to be a unified computing environment, hence why it was called "hybrid."
According to Interesting Engineering, there are different hybrid cloud architectures that will depend on the organization's particular requirements.
This includes (1) Cloud Bursting Model that the private cloud will serve as the primary computing environment, (2) Data Replication Model that will replicate non-sensitive data for backup, and (3) Multi-Cloud Model that helps to prevent organizations to lock in, boost resilience, and enhance efficiency.
Organizations commonly used this strategy by combining technologies like virtual private networks, leased lines, or application program interfaces that will connect both private and public cloud components. Data and applications were able to move smoothly between the two clouds because of these technologies' security and connection effectiveness.
Pros and Cons
In a conducted survey by the 2022 Flexera State of the Cloud, it was revealed that all participating companies used at least one public or private cloud, while 80% of them have a hybrid cloud environment. But there are advantages and disadvantages to a hybrid cloud setup.
As per ZDNet, the meaning of cloud computing is changing and it is better to define it based on its characteristics than the computing infrastructure managed by someone else in an outsourced data center.
Combining both cloud components will give businesses improved flexibility and reduced costs. This will also keep the businesses unique when it comes to controlling data and applications as they fuse the advantages of both approaches. In the event of downtime, a hybrid cloud can also limit the damages and business disruption.
For its challenges, this will standardize policies and procedures so businesses will have to consider how they will adapt their security policies and procedures for these providers. With providers' tool offerings being different from one another, businesses have to find a way to integrate and monitor the logs and data simultaneously.
When it comes to compliance, EC Council reported that data flowing is inevitable between multiple clouds in a hybrid cloud environment. Businesses will have to protect this information from potential data breaches and need to ensure compliance with laws and standards.
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