What is a Hybrid Cloud Platform?

A hybrid cloud platform is a combination of on-premises public and private clouds. Hybrid clouds deliver the best of both by switching platforms and transferring workload between them. In hybrid cloud platforms, both private and public clouds work in sync with the help of hybrid cloud management tools. 

In general, hybrid clouds connect on-premises data centers to public clouds. The hybrid cloud allows enterprises to choose between platforms that provide the best performance, security for hosting data and applications. It is cheaper to run big data applications on public clouds than on sensitive data. It makes more sense to keep sensitive data in the private cloud. 

Hybrid cloud solutions provide access to a single pool of resources that can be shared seamlessly. This supports an enterprise’s effort of digital transformation along with modern application strategies.

Hybrid Cloud Architecture

Managing overall public and private cloud resources is more convenient rather than managing individual cloud platforms. As a result, the processes are simplified by reducing redundancies. 

The basic components required to form a hybrid cloud architecture are:

• Public Infrastructure as a Service Platform (Iaas)

It provides public cloud services for storing data and networking resources. The most used IaaS platforms are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

• Private Cloud Platforms and On-Premises Infrastructure

Private clouds act as an on-demand cloud deployment model. It includes major hardware components like on-premises data centers, servers, storage, and networking equipment.  

• Management Tools

Any cloud infrastructure’s important concern is its security. These different sets of tools allow businesses to keep a tab on the performance and storage capacity of hybrid cloud environments. Hybrid cloud management tools use the concept of open-source IaaS integrated with public cloud platforms. 

• Network Connection

For a successful hybrid cloud strategy, it is important to have a strong network connection. It is mostly accomplished by using application programming interfaces (APIs), Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), and wide area networks (WANs).

Benefits of Hybrid Cloud

The implementation of Hybrid cloud computing offers several benefits to enterprises.

• Flexibility

Generally, a hybrid cloud platform uses both traditional systems as well as the latest cloud technology. The load balancing feature allows enterprises to seamlessly migrate workloads to the new cloud environment. Hybrid clouds allow organizations to scale up and down according to need. Thus, allowing them to adapt to changing business demands quickly.

• Cost-Effective

Private clouds use on-premise infrastructure that requires immense capital investment to deploy and maintain. Whereas hybrid clouds let organizations divide and run workloads between environments that prove to be cost-effective.

• Agility and Scalability

Although private cloud platforms are highly agile in terms of provisioning and scaling, on-premise data centers have fewer resources available. This could be a problem when there is an increase in workload or a spike in demands. With hybrid clouds, you can easily migrate local workload from private infrastructure to public infrastructure.

• Security and compliance

Security is one of the biggest concerns for IT organizations. In the case of public cloud environments, businesses do not have any control over cloud infrastructure. The entire infrastructure is the exclusive property of the provider. Organizations have a higher risk of losing data in event of a security breach. 

Therefore it makes sense to keep sensitive data in a private environment while operating workloads in the cloud or vice versa. Since certain multinational organizations have restrictions on the migration of certain workloads.

Hybrid Cloud Challenges And Strategies To Overcome Them

Hybrid cloud platforms are a solution for rapid product deployment, agility, and integration of private environments with public infrastructure. However, implementing hybrid cloud platforms is one giant step for IT enterprises. Discarding traditional solutions overnight is not child’s play and is nearly impossible.  Some of the most significant challenges faced by organizations are:

• Compatibility

The first and foremost challenge in adopting hybrid cloud solutions is the compatibility of existing applications with the cloud platform. To successfully implement the hybrid cloud infrastructure organizations need to modernize applications that are incompatible with the cloud platform. 

Migration from a private environment to a hybrid cloud system is a time-consuming process. The easiest method of modernization of legacy applications is through “lift and shift”. It involves moving the application without altering the data or the application. The location of the application i.e the public or private cloud system depends on the workload requirements.

If organizations want to restructure the code of the existing application or improve business continuity. In that case, organizations can modify their applications in order to adapt them to a new environment using refactoring migration.

• Security 

Each day tons of data are moving to the cloud, which is why organizations must have strategies to protect them. A typical hybrid cloud model involves transferring data between public and private clouds. Therefore it is easy for intruders to steal your data in the event of a security breach.  

To overcome data privacy and security breach problems organizations need to implement strategies. Such as using endpoint verification protocols, VPN, and data encryption policy. Regulations and compliance standards have become increasingly important due to GDPR and other data security standards.

According to PWC, 66% of IT professionals consider security risk a major challenge in the cloud adoption process. Whereas in reality, the adoption of cloud-based services increases security. 

Public cloud providers invest higher capital in security than individual businesses. For example, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services invest around $1 billion every year in their cloud security. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between cloud service providers and businesses ensure data confidentiality. 

Additionally, risk management tools like IDS/IPS ensure the protection of an organization’s intellectual property against potential threats. These tools help in scanning suspicious activities and monitoring the system with advanced firewalls.

• Lack of Expertise

According to research by Wakefield, 94% of IT stakeholders face difficulties due to a lack of skills. Although there is a huge demand for hybrid cloud platforms, the industry also faces a shortage of skilled employees.   

Migration of applications to the cloud-based system requires highly creative skills and knowledge. Lack of skill is a huge challenge in the cloud migration process and slows down the digital transformation. Lack of expertise personnel along with high demands results in increased workloads on existing teams. As a result, it increases the chances of human error. 

Businesses are taking the initiative to groom their employees by providing training and resources required for cloud technologies. And for the time being, are adopting multi-cloud deployments. Since companies want to make sure they have employees with requisite cloud computing skills before investing in it. 

To overcome this problem organizations are associating with cloud management partners and developing a cloud center of excellence within the organization. The team’s responsibility is researching, choosing, implementing, and managing cloud solutions.  

• Vendor Lock-In

Organizations need to carefully select a cloud vendor before migrating to hybrid cloud platforms. Companies need to consider factors like the need for higher interoperability as their organization grow in the future. This might be a problem as the present cloud provider might not be capable of providing the requirements.

 Open source cloud solutions offer organizations the opportunity to build local scalable infrastructures and deploy large networks of virtual machines.

Supposedly a company has moved all its systems to the cloud. In such a case, the company is under the control of the vendor. If not chosen carefully companies can get stuck vendors that provide poor cloud services and hinder product deliveries. 

Moreover, according to Bezos Law the cloud services costs get cut by half after every 18 months. As prices fall, companies do not want to be associated with an uncompetitive vendor. 

To overcome these challenges organizations are taking up hybrid or multi-cloud solutions by spreading their systems across multiple cloud platforms. As a result, it allows movement between service providers and works in more economical platforms. Organizations can also modernize applications by making them portable. Portable applications can work across any platform and it eliminates the risk of staying stuck with one vendor. 

• Visibility And Control

Cloud computing is beneficial as IT companies don’t have to deal with infrastructure and resource management. Thus, saving time, work, and costs. However, it reduces the control and visibility of the applications and cloud computing systems.

Since companies have no access to data and security tools, it leaves the organization exposed to cloud security risks. Moreover, due to a lack of control on cloud platforms companies do not have the ability to execute incident response plans. 

Organizations must enquire vendors about how much access and control they will get before jumping to cloud platforms.

• Migration Costs

This is perhaps the biggest challenge that organizations face during migration to the cloud from traditional solutions. As we have already discussed switching to Hybrid cloud platforms is not an easy task. Challenges like lack of skilled employees, modernizing applications for compatibility, are expensive to overcome.

Training skilled employees, and providing resources for tweaking applications to make them compatible on cloud platforms require heavy capital. Organizations need to assess beforehand what kind of services they require based on their scalability and future projects. All major cloud vendors provide calculators to calculate the cloud costs. 

Bottomline

Organizations need to be more agile and fast-paced in a world of ever-increasing demands. In this competitive market, IT organizations can only succeed by adopting new technologies, such as Hybrid Cloud Platforms. It is already clear that hybrid cloud solutions are here to stay. 

Adopting cloud solutions is quite challenging and requires a lot of effort and money. With Codesis services you can avoid these challenges while making the jump to hybrid cloud platforms and transforming your business.