Wednesday, November 20, 2013

October Newsletter – Hybrid Cloud

Vega newsletter is published monthly by Vega BI, and distributed to our partners to facilitate pursuit of a common interest in top-notch technologies.

Cloud computing promises a new world of IT agility. Organizations often plan an elegant cloud environment that will be easy to maintain. But business needs often change that plan, and the reality is usually a complex and dynamic cloud environment that is unwieldy to manage.        Hybrid Cloud is our topic of the month, read an executive summary on the benefits and challenges of the hybrid cloud at page 2, and get an idea of some software solutions that can support such environment from different angles, at our glance on players section at page 3.

Hybrid Cloud Computing Overview & Benefits

As we witness high adoption rates for the public cloud and the private cloud, businesses are turning towards a hybrid cloud computing solution. Over the last few years security, operational challenges, performance, and data compliance issues have become a growing concern while using public cloud services. This is why businesses started shifting to the private cloud. While the private cloud offered more control and visibility over business processes, investments and infrastructure management still remained a concern.

With shrinking IT budgets and rising business demands, companies are looking for an intermediate model of cloud computing technology. The hybrid cloud computing solution rightly fits into this space. Certain applications require more control on data management solutions, while other applications do not demand such a high level of protection. By integrating the public cloud with the private cloud, businesses get the flexibility to isolate sensitive data while still benefiting from the many advantages offered by the public cloud.

What is hybrid cloud computing?
A hybrid cloud is the combination of public and private clouds that are customized to suit specific business requirements.  You can combine multiple private and public clouds to suit your needs. In short, a hybrid cloud computing solution strikes the right balance between scalability, agility, performance, security , operational flexibility as well as TCO.
Benefits of hybrid cloud computing
A hybrid cloud offers the following benefits by splitting business processes so that each process demand goes into the right cloud. Here are certain benefits offered by a hybrid cloud.
·         Flexible business operations
Every enterprise runs multiple business processes that are different in nature. While some processes work on critical data, some of them perform regular day-to-day activities. If a business function does not process critical data, you can use a public cloud. At the same time, mission critical functions can use a private cloud. By diversifying business needs, companies can leverage resources and overcome IT challenges.
·         Optimized costs
Depending on your business processes, you can configure your hybrid cloud using private and public clouds. As mission critical processes are comparatively fewer, while other less critical business process can benefits by the reduced cost and scalable solutions offered by the public 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.
·         Improved performance
By optimizing available resources, businesses can gain a maximum output from business processes. With highly scalable networks offering the required agility, companies can improve SLA’s and minimize downtime.

The idea behind hybrid clouds is that businesses can combine the use of public and private clouds to take advantage of the scalability and cost-effectiveness offered by the public cloud computing environment without exposing mission-critical applications and data to the vulnerabilities associated with the public cloud option.