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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Private Cloud Solutions Save Costs

It can be very costly for organizations to hire experts in multiple departments and additional IT employees to keep data secure for all departments and lines of business. Utilizing a private cloud provider, organizations require fewer IT employees to keep data secure, backed up, and servers maintained. This translates into cost savings over time. In addition, the public cloud can become extremely expensive the larger your environment grows, whereas private cloud is much less costly.

Advanced Management and Monitoring

Outsourcing a company’s management of data with a private cloud solution allows them to benefit from the skills of a dedicated team that is monitoring their applications and data around the clock. In the case of an in-house IT staff, they will experience minimal burden and will concentrate on maintaining the internal operations optimally.

Increased Control

A private cloud allows a business to gain complete transparency and control over the individuals who can access their data. The cloud provider will be able to inform them regarding the location of their data as well as the staff members who can access the information. Moreover, an organization can make sure that only particular users have authorized access to certain data sets. On the other hand, a public cloud has a one-size-fits-all approach and fails by comparison for customization of services or resources. A public cloud offers little to zero control over one’s infrastructure or data. But an isolated cloud lets a company scale their environment and personalize the additional solutions such as disaster recovery and high availability. Most public clouds take a one-size-fits-all approach with a few options here and there. A private cloud can be custom-tailored to your specific organization’s needs, which provides an additional level of control. 

Private Cloud Is More Secure

Security is the top benefit when it comes to a private cloud for enterprise. This form of cloud computing is known for providing a high level of security that cannot be beaten by a hybrid or public cloud. This is essential for organizations sticking to regulatory compliance. It is no surprise that the majority of users of an isolated cloud are in finance and banking, government organizations, and big corporations. It is secure because the business is not sharing data storage with other organizations that they are not familiar with, and they can have their cloud infrastructure configured according to their specifications and individual needs.

Better Resource Management

Virtualization critically boosts the physical server hardware’s value. As opposed to having five servers with an average CPU utilization of 10 percent, a business is able to virtualize the five servers on a single physical server that shares resources. This minimizes the rack space and power usage, and it is easier to manage. Also, this lets a company duplicate server copies and keep them operating very fast. In the case their server has proper tools for resource management initialized, they are able to automatically allocate proper resources to a particular server when required, or shut it down during low usage. This is an efficient and effective method of server management.

Increased Flexibility

This is an attractive benefit of this form of cloud computing. The ability to tear down and spin up a server in a few minutes is incredibly useful and powerful. There is no need to waste one’s effort in attempting to size a server in advance when one can create it instantly. Whether a business requires more CPU, more RAM, or more disk space, they can obtain it immediately. When it comes to an isolated cloud, they can have resources reallocated in minutes without having to worry about getting a physical server that will offer the resources required by the new server.

Private Cloud Solutions Are Better Equipped for Compliant Data

Companies of all shapes and sizes are required to comply with policies and laws of their particular industry or business environment. A private cloud is a perfect solution in this scenario since it can be deployed with specific access-control and retention policies. For any organization, customer data is deemed by common-sense and law to be extremely sensitive user data. Companies require having unparalleled control over their information as well as enabling data privacy. 

Reassurance of Separation

The stand-alone characteristic of this cloud makes it ideal for any company that needs full separation of cloud infrastructure from other organizations. This could be for compliance regulations, data security approach, and internal policy reasons. For instance, a business that handles high volumes of confidential and sensitive data such as a financial institution might be suited for a private server.

Disaster Recovery Is Priceless

A public cloud typically has a lower price point at first sight, but this does not mean that it will possess the functionality of an isolated cloud. While an isolated cloud may seem slightly more costly than a public cloud, it offers a business more value for their money. With a private cloud for enterprise, good providers offer disaster recovery services. This one benefit could be the difference between an organization losing all of their data and not. In a data breach situation or a server going down, a smart organization can take solace in the fact that their data is secure and stored with a private cloud provider that offers disaster recovery services.

Conclusion

From expertise, control, and security to flexibility, compliance, and other benefits, a business is sure to get value for their money by implementing a private cloud for enterprise. They can enjoy peace of mind from increased customization, increased security, and increased efficiency.

The post 10 Benefits of Private Cloud For The Enterprise appeared first on Wowrack Blog.

Very quickly, healthcare IT professionals are seeing the immense power that cloud hosting can provide to their digital infrastructure, as it supports two of their overarching goals: creating and maintaining cost-effective services and providing high-quality patient care. Companies like Wowrack provide varying levels of managed hosting options and provide a full spectrum of services that can be customized to fit the needs of your team, from private cloud hosting, managed security, disaster recovery and more.  

Cost-Effective Management

Transitioning to cloud technology can bring about significant cost savings to healthcare providers by limiting their expenditures to only the infrastructure and storage capabilities they utilize. One of the cloud’s continuous advantages is its ability to transform data analyzations in multiple, collaborative ways that can be useful to many groups of people quickly. This limits the manpower needed to drive these reports and instead can be automated based on the set-up of the servers. Additionally, the scalable accessibility of the cloud is extremely helpful in rolling out new applications, whether remotely or in-house.

Elevated Patient Care Standards

Year over year, standards continue to rise for patient care, and this doesn’t just include a physician’s bedside manner. Security protocols are continuously being scrutinized and tested to ensure the maximum amount of protections possible against possible data breaches. Similarly, the customizations within the cloud are endless, allowing the facility to tailor the data to whatever output is needed on an analyzation and reporting basis. Additionally, hosting patient information on a secure private cloud can greatly help with the accuracy of patient information and decreased number of errors that can occur with manual handling of data.

Healthcare Cybersecurity Measures

Undoubtedly, one of the biggest concerns healthcare administrators have towards transitioning to cloud computing is security. When dealing with classified information such as patient data, one can’t be too careful with the security protocols put into place. Luckily, the cloud can be customized to provide exactly the right amount of security needed to protect your data, and added security measures can ensure peace of mind when an in-house IT team isn’t available 24/7. For those in the industry, HIPAA compliance is something that needs to be addressed in all areas of data storage and management, and through cloud computing, services like HIPAA compliant data storage and HIPAA compliant email are possible without as many risks as past methods.

The future of the healthcare industry, and individual providers, will ultimately largely be based on the quality of their network infrastructure. Companies with a healthcare-focused cloud specialization like Wowrack analyze and implement aspects that result in seamless and secure cloud hosting for your patient information and applications. For those in charge of IT services within various healthcare organizations, taking on the architecture and implementation of cloud-based digitization protocols can be a hefty undertaking, and can greatly benefit with the expertise and guidance of a professional managed hosting provider.

Contact us today if you would like to speak with one of our specialists. Wowrack is always happy to discuss new ways we can help  your company grow.

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