Most organizations deal with the pressure to innovate, be more efficient, and continue to grow financially. A key growth factor for all businesses is to have some sort of transformation to become a digital business. Cloud services and platforms offer organizations a chance to do this both quickly and cost-effectively. A core element that is gaining momentum for optimizing cloud success are hybrid solutions.
It is not just us at Sherweb that think so. By 2021, according to Gartner, over 75% of mid-size and large organizations will have some sort of hybrid IT strategy. In order to help businesses, Sherweb wants to help you understand what hybrid is and why you should consider it as part of your cloud and IT roadmap.
Check out our performance cloud solution for your hybrid cloud needs today!
If you are a traditional on-premises organization, you need not worry because now you have an opportunity to optimize at lower costs. Sherweb can help you find the right hybrid cloud solutions that can accelerate speed and flexibility without adding purchases of infrastructure.
What exactly is the hybrid cloud?
Let’s start by defining this concept.
An on-premises infrastructure that has cloud computing environment connection(s) with either a public or private cloud solution.
For the sake of clarity, let’s walk through a simple example. A company no longer wants to maintain email servers on-premises. They choose an option like Office 365. Their existing Active Directory still resides on-premises and is working just fine. For them, it makes more financial sense to keep it there. So, they connect and sync cloud email with an on-premise Active Directory. This organization fits our definition for hybrid: one solution UP in the cloud, one DOWN on-premises.
Another simple scenario is built around security vs. availability. Organizations may have critical operations, data, and solutions that need tighter security. On-premise environments may provide a greater sense of security, and it may be necessary due to regulations. But that does not mean other workloads, like an ordering app for remote sales staff that has lesser security requirements, wouldn’t benefit from being available in the cloud. Again, we have a hybrid offering that passes our definition: one UP and one DOWN.
Why hybrid?
Now that you understand the definition and saw a couple of simple examples let’s take a better look at some of the bigger whys to hybrid.
Quicker disaster recovery
Disaster recovery is one reason companies use a hybrid cloud. In short, if an incident happens, you are down until you are up. Both disaster recovery and the time you are down are expensive and resource intense. The real goal is to be back up as soon as possible.
Cloud-based storage and computing resources can adapt to your organization. This means that you pay for what you use. Mission-critical applications, infrastructure, and data can be synced and ready to fire up when a disaster occurs for as long as you need it. And for much less than on-premise DR solutions run.
Organizations cannot avoid disaster recovery. A hybrid cloud disaster recovery model lets organizations have the best of both worlds: lower storage and computing costs, while availability always remains high and quick to implement.
Scalability and flexibility
Organizations can pick and choose what systems they want to keep on-premise and what they want to put into the cloud. It is not an ALL OR NOTHING scenario like with on-premise-only environments.
You know your organization better than anyone. You will know what systems need to stay on-premise due to regulations, budgets, or any other reason. These could be legacy applications that aren’t broke, so they don’t need fixing. Or there may be requirement constraints that keep you from moving certain workloads to the cloud.
Again, hybrid is flexible, and you can move as much or as little as needed when you need to. The cloud is always available and ready to scale up or down. Solutions can be provisioned on-demand and ready for your unique needs without limitations. You can maintain legacy systems and place existing or new workloads into the cloud when it makes sense for you.
Innovate
In a traditional on-premise environment, any new or diverse technologies need to fit into tight constraints. Think of how many proposals have been shot down because they could not fit into IT’s plan. This may cause an organization to stagnate due to not being able to access new solutions. Remember that every business is in the innovation business in one form or another.
Having a hybrid approach gives organizations the ability to make calculated choices. It supports fast innovation while also keeping stability and security in its formula.
Cloud bursting is a good example. This is an application deployment model where a solution or app can run on a server in a data center yet bursts into a public cloud when the need arises. Think of these as non-critical but high-performance applications that handle non-sensitive information.
Third-party solutions like CRM solutions that do not have dependencies can be easily deployed on both PC and mobile devices with little configuration. Formerly these solutions would probably have been priced out before even being considered since only enterprise-level companies could afford them. Now, most small- to mid-size startup companies don’t own infrastructure (servers) at all.
Reduce administrative costs
On-premises infrastructure cost isn’t just hardware and electricity alone. You need to factor in the total costs of physical resources as well. You need staff to maintain, update, and patch hardware and software. There are electric bills and depreciation costs to consider.
The more resources that are in the cloud, the more time your IT staff would have to INNOVATE your organization’s IT strategic goals instead of maintaining or petting servers.
You can build and administer all your workloads (on-premises, private, and public clouds) in one location. This makes it easier for IT staff to keep things moving.
Conclusion
A hybrid cloud solution lets you combine public and private resources. IT can maximize productivity and security while offering cost-saving solutions that they determine.
Organizations new to the cloud can move as fast as they want. Existing infrastructure and solutions can become cutting edge without having the costs to overhaul everything. Then, IT can better position their organizations for future growth and innovation.
Remember, making these choices and determinations does not have to be painful. Sherweb has spent years perfecting our expertise and services in the cloud and with hybrid solutions. Let us put our world-class architects’ knowledge and experience to work for you.
With Sherweb, you get an expert cloud solutions partner that is committed to your success. We offer everything you would need from network operations to architects to professional services to help desk.
Let Sherweb be your resource to understand the cloud.
For more information about how Sherweb can help you with all your cloud needs, contact us today.
