Based on Cisco’s 2022 Global Hybrid Cloud Trends Report, which surveyed 2500 IT decision-makers in 13 countries, 82% of IT leaders have adopted the hybrid cloud. However, the same survey also found that when deploying a hybrid cloud, the top 3 challenges are:

1. Security (37%)
2. Increased operational complexity and cost management (33%)
3. Compliance and privacy (31%)

What are Some Hybrid Cloud Best Practices?

To address the challenges mentioned in the previous section, businesses can implement a set of best practices to optimize their hybrid cloud deployment and mitigate potential risks. These are some of those best practices: 

Evaluate your needs and requirements

Evaluating your company’s needs and requirements ensures that your hybrid cloud deployment is tailored to your specific needs while avoiding unnecessary costs. This involves assessing storage needs, computing power, and network bandwidth. However, it’s important to note that this evaluation is an ongoing process. Regularly tracking resource usage and evolving needs allows you to optimize resource utilization and prevent unexpected costs. 

Additionally, consult with your provider to see if they allow you to pay only for what you use, or provide bundled service packages that can help you save money and avoid overspending. 

Check the hybrid cloud provider’s SLA

A provider’s Service Level Agreement outlines the provider’s guarantees regarding uptime, performance, availability, support, and security. Thus, before choosing a hybrid cloud provider, make sure that you review and understand their SLAs. By making sure that the SLA aligns with your organization’s requirements, you can minimize the risk of downtime and ensure business continuity.  

Implementing security measures

Security is a crucial best practice for hybrid cloud usage as you want to make sure all private information related to your business is kept confidential. Implementing security measures in your cloud environment can be done through encryption strategies, managing access controls, and regularly patching and updating your systems. Moreover, you should also continuously monitor your systems for potential security threats and make disaster recovery plans for your business, so that you can respond to any security issues quickly. It’s recommended to consult with your provider to see if they can help you with implementing these security measures so you don’t have to manage all that on your own.  

Who should use a hybrid cloud?

Small medium businesses (SMBs) 

Hybrid cloud is the perfect solution for small-medium businesses as it allows them to store their sensitive data securely in a private cloud while still utilizing the public cloud for scalable and cost-efficient resources. This ensures that the business has optimal website performance and delivers an excellent and secure customer experience. 

Software developers

Hybrid cloud provides software developers with an affordable and flexible platform to build, test, and deploy applications quickly and efficiently. Developers can still keep their sensitive data on the private cloud while using budget-friendly resources from the public cloud for development and testing needs. 

Regulatory-driven businesses

Hybrid cloud allow businesses that have strict compliance requirements to maintain control over sensitive information by safely storing them in the private cloud while still enjoying the scalability and cost benefits of public cloud services. This is so they can comply with regulatory standards and ensure data privacy and security, while still saving some costs.  

Media and entertainment industry

Businesses in the media and entertainment industry has to deal with large files that require big-sized storage. This includes high-resolution video, images, and graphics. Using the this type of cloud can help them store and process those data cost-effectively. They can also use the public cloud resources for their content distribution and streaming while safely storing their valuable assets and information on the private cloud. This helps them to ensure a smooth content delivery while maintaining the protection of intellectual property. 

Educational institutions and research organizations

Hybrid cloud can help educational institutions and research organizations as they allow them to keep their students and research data secure on the private cloud while taking advantage of the public cloud for hosting online courses and learning platforms. This way, they can enjoy easy and convenient access to resources, while still keeping their sensitive data private.  

Overall, a hybrid cloud is a perfect solution for organizations or individuals who want flexibility, scalability, affordability, and secure data management by combining private and public cloud environments to meet their specific needs.

Click here to learn more about how Hybrid Cloud works. 

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More and more, stakeholders are realizing the benefits of managed hybrid cloud solutions, as it is the perfect marriage between the public cloud vs private cloud debate. There are advantages to both environments, so why not utilize both? That’s the core concept of hybrid cloud solutions, and the added benefits of having a managed component to the service can help disaster mitigation and optimal performance assurance.

Top 3 Benefits of Managed Hybrid Cloud

Custom Resource Allocation

As mentioned above, there are benefits to both public and private cloud environments that entice businesses. The hybrid cloud was created to bridge the gap between the two types of cloud infrastructures so that a company can utilize containers to divide up their applications as needed to best suit their business plan.

You can segment your data into these environments tailored to your goals – applications that require high performance would require a private cloud, whereas application testing might favor better within a public cloud environment such as Google, AWS or Microsoft Azure:

Hybrid Cloud Security & Compliance

Specific to a managed hybrid cloud environment, and similar to the customization point above, hybrid cloud security & compliance can be adequately addressed and deployed without ongoing concerns. By partnering with a cloud service provider such as Wowrack, you can ensure that all applications within your hybrid cloud are allocated in the correct container, and therefore all adhere to your specific compliance regulations or security concerns.

This is especially prevalent for those looking to utilize a hybrid cloud environment for healthcare companies, or other companies (such as legal firms) that handle very sensitive data. Instead of limiting the potential of the overall environment from a performance or scaling perspective due to privacy concerns, hybrid clouds adequately remove those limitations.

Managed hybrid cloud environments are the most protected against DDoS attacks, performance issues or other security breaches that can not only damage your performance output but put your data in jeopardy – potentially costing you precious time and money to recover from. Utilizing a managed team can ensure consistent monitoring and performance evaluations to provide top output for your hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Furthering customization opportunities, Wowrack is one of the few cloud service providers that allows the customer to combine company-owned equipment into the equation via local colocation services.

This way you can host privately-owned equipment in Wowrack’s SSAE-16 audited data center, connect to public cloud infrastructures such as Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google on top of a private cloud infrastructure. Through our managed hybrid infrastructure services, your colocation, public & private cloud environments are protected up to the application layer.

Hybrid Cloud Cost Management

Optimal performance and efficient use of cloud environments ensure the available cost savings within a managed hybrid cloud. By utilizing one cloud service provider, you’ll be able to see a breakdown of exactly where your resources are allocated and can easily make transitions or scaling decisions.

Similarly, by partnering with a cloud service provider, you can remove all cloud-related tasks from your internal IT team, freeing them up for other resource-generating tasks. This helps ensure 24/7/365 coverage of your hybrid cloud environment without putting pressure on your team to worry about disaster mitigation needs or compliance concerns.

If your business hasn’t yet migrated to the cloud, it’s not too late – and encouraged to do so. As IT expenditures continue to increase into 2019 and beyond, it’s important to allocate funding to what will best support performance and revenue output – contact Wowrack today to discuss the benefits of migrating to a managed hybrid cloud for your enterprise.

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