Hybrid Cloud Computing: How to Save Costs with that Approach

Whenever organizations plan on expanding their business, one of the most important factors that they must keep in mind is the management of their critical data. This is because when an organisation grows, its data also grows.

While transferring your files to a cloud server is the ideal choice here, it can turn out to be a pricey option in case your files are too big to handle. In such a scenario, organisations- big and small, can benefit from installing a hybrid cloud computing hierarchy.

What Is Hybrid Cloud Architecture?

In hybrid cloud architecture, an on-premise server can be associated with the private cloud and public cloud. By making use of a hybrid cloud arrangement, businesses can efficiently switch their data storage online yet keep the most important files on premise. Usually, all big companies these days use public, private and hybrid cloud in tandem.

Public vs Private vs Hybrid Cloud: What Is the Difference

Different types of cloud computing match the cloud storage & sharing needs of different businesses. Let’s understand public, private, and hybrid cloud in detail.

Public Cloud: Public cloud resources are managed by third-party provided and can be accessed easily through the internet. Public cloud architecture ensures no maintenance cost and thus reduced data management costs.

Private Cloud: In private cloud computing, resources like hardware, software and other IT infrastructure elements are dedicated to just one organization. This private cloud computing setup ensures higher control over the data and privacy.

Hybrid Cloud: Hybrid cloud computing combines the benefits of public and private cloud. As a result, companies enjoy the data control of private cloud computing and scalability of the public cloud architecture.

Benefits of Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

Hybrid cloud infrastructure works on the basic principle of treating less sensitive, dynamic workloads differently from more sensitive and less volatile data. While changing workloads can be stored on a scalable public cloud, sensitive data can be securely maintained on premise. The hybrid strategy reduces the data storage costs while allowing the companies to tap both worlds’ benefits. Other benefits of the hybrid cloud infrastructure are:

Efficient Implementation Process

In implementing a hybrid cloud, you can even transfer important business processes such as human resources and customer relation management without facing any hassle.

Governance and Ownership

Organizations can benefit from creating a company-wide policy, which clearly states how cloud services can be implemented and for what sort of data. Hybrid cloud architecture also helps establish a flexible ownership distribution across departments and teams. Governance and ownership of your hybrid cloud computing can be made more efficient with tools such as NetApp.

Transparency in Billing

The best cloud providers such as NetApp, provide a detailed analysis of how your business utilizes cloud services and the cost it is incurring. You can also generate intuitive reports on a daily and hourly basis. Such flexible planning available with hybrid cloud systems helps plan your budget efficiently.

Agility

Modern day digital businesses need to adapt their functioning as and when the challenges arise. Using a cloud provider such as NetApp provides your business that much needed agility to evolve your business operations in a short duration of time.

Enhanced Connectivity with Existing Systems

By using a designated cloud provider, you have the option of upgrading those systems currently operating on obsolete architecture and those which might hold the most critical data.

Suggested read: What is Cloud Computing (with Examples)

How Does NetApp Help Enhance Cloud Storage Performance

NetApp cloud provider is at the heart of several well-known public cloud services including AWS, Google, Oracle, Azure and more.

In fact, NetApp ONTAP data management rests at the core of Microsoft Azure NetApp files. The application requires intensive access to data and large bandwidth. But the usage of NetApp ensures that the performance is never lacking. During one of the sample tests, a single volume was touching close to 5000 Mib/s sequential reads and almost 1700 Mib/s sequential writes.

And it is not just Microsoft, NetApp extends its services to Google Cloud as well. For Google Cloud, it supports SMB 3.0. SMB is privy for personal and commercial use applications to request data access. Hence the service provided by NetApp makes it suitable to be used for a lot of workflows such as finance, multimedia content and more.

NetApp cloud providers have also partnered with Azure to achieve unprecedented rates of sequential reads and writes. The one standout feature is that Microsoft Azure & NetApp combination enables the increase and decrease of service levels as per the requirement by only paying a minimum cost.

Industries Which Can Save Significantly with Hybrid Cloud Approach

A hybrid cloud approach means that an organization can easily switch between on premises or private cloud architecture and offshore cloud servers or public cloud. In this way they cannot only cut back on their operational costs but also ensure the security of their data in a shifting digital world. Let’s have a look at the top industries benefiting from using hybrid cloud architecture.

Government

Governments across the world are leveraging hybrid cloud services to storing their most critical data on premise and backing up other files to the public cloud. Hybrid cloud is essential for developing cost efficient storage options especially for government centres.

Education

Hybrid cloud computing not only enhances data accessibility but also improves collaboration. Moreover, hybrid cloud architecture allows institutions to follow all established regulations. These hybrid solutions are extremely scalable and can be extended to strengthen your educational infrastructure.

Healthcare

Healthcare industry is making huge progress when it comes to using hybrid clouds. Not only can patients easily share their data remotely with doctors but also avoid their medical history from being accessed by hackers.

Healthcare industries can manage critical patient data without compromising on the security. The hybrid cloud setup further helps implement AI and machine learning technologies to recommend better diagnosis and treatment.

Finance

Hybrid cloud service providers such as NetApp enable financial organizations such as banks to scale up their operations while keeping the most critical data on the premises. These organisations can cut down on their operation cost by running critical workloads on the cloud while maintaining non-critical data on premise.

Retail

Retail sector is fast opening up to hybrid cloud service so as to provide each customer with a personalised experience yet maintain brand consistency across channels. This way, stores and outlets are also able to have a better control of their inventory and impact their sales in a positive manner.

Automotive

Automotive sector can benefit from hybrid cloud as it helps them to know the real time status of spare parts. It will also come handy in the future when self-driven cars become the norm and the data they collected while being on the road. A plus point for having a dedicated hybrid cloud solution is that automotive companies can establish better communication with their suppliers.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing sector can make use of hybrid cloud servers to funnel their order of variable size and then assigning products for meeting those requirements. Hybrid cloud ERP solution is capable of migrating each part of the manufacturing process to the cloud and cut down on maintenance expenditure.

Conclusion

Hybrid cloud computing architecture is surely the future of IT infrastructure as it enables security and cost efficiency to go hand in hand. Adopting a hybrid solution for your organisation can still be a daunting task. But not when you employ the service of popular cloud service providers such as NetApp.