Defining the hybrid cloud

The public cloud’s pay-as-you-go offerings can be enticing, but for various reasons such as security, intellectual property, and cost of ownership, organizations need to preserve their existing workloads and assets in private data centers.

These factors, along with the growing use of edge computing, make a hybrid cloud a necessary solution to meet current and future needs. But before diving into the hybrid cloud, it’s important to dispel a common misconception.

Some organizations may run certain workloads on public cloud providers such as AWS, GCP, or Azure while running other workloads in their private data centers. While these workloads are running in both public and private cloud environments, this hosting setup is not truly a hybrid cloud. Instead, these environments are isolated silos.

A true hybrid cloud is about creating a consistent platform across multiple environments.

According to the Gartner Glossary, “hybrid cloud computing refers to policy-based and coordinated service provisioning, use, and management across a mixture of internal and external cloud services.”

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines hybrid cloud as “the cloud infrastructure [which] is a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds).” [Source: NIST SP 800-145]

In our words, a hybrid cloud is a pool of computing power, storage, and services that is available from multiple environments, including the following:

• More than one public cloud
• More than one private cloud
• Private and public cloud combination

The ratio of consumption between private and public clouds varies based on the industry you’re in, and it evolves as per compliance needs and time.

Variations in the hybrid cloud – homogeneous and heterogeneous

Variations in the hybrid cloud are entirely possible. You can have the following:

• Homogeneous hybrid cloud
• Heterogeneous hybrid cloud

Choosing between these two is based on your needs and strategy.

When you run the same technology stack in both public and private clouds, it’s homogeneous. Traditionally, a single software vendor, such as Red Hat or VMware, provides a software stack including the operating system, hypervisor, and management layers for both clouds.

But when you run different components from different vendors and integrate them, that would be a heterogeneous cloud. You would have public cloud providers, such as AWS and Azure, and private cloud capabilities would come from Red Hat, VMware, and so on, and would be integrated with the public cloud at different levels.

Both come with pros and cons. While homogeneous can bring ease of usage but vendor lock-in, heterogeneous can provide more control and some complexity. You will want to consider various aspects before choosing which one you would like to implement:

• How much control you would like to have architecturally
• IT skills in your organization
• Cost and resources

Ultimately, it’s about the appropriate platform for your respective applications. Organizations are looking at the cloud from economics, security, and use case points of view.

It is not always possible to move every workload to the public cloud. Organizations are also mindful of losing control of data and applications. Also, moving everything to the public cloud would mean that organizations are limited to the capabilities of the public cloud and costs can go out of control.

A hybrid cloud, on the other hand, will have resources distributed across on-premises, private, and public cloud environments.

This means a balanced approach where organizations get the speed and scale of the public cloud with the security and cost-effectiveness of the private cloud.

Because of the benefits the hybrid cloud brings and organizations’ requirements, we are witnessing offerings by the public cloud that accommodate existing investments in private data centers. Some examples include VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware on Azure, and SAP on Google Cloud.

Many enterprises want to port on-premises virtual machines to the public cloud. The following diagram, taken from AWS, is a high-level component architecture reflecting VMware Cloud on AWS:

Figure 1.2 – VMware architecture on AWS

Not only that, but public cloud providers have also built extensions that push cloud solutions to organizations’ private data centers. For example, AWS Outposts provides a hybrid experience by extending the AWS infrastructure, services, and APIs to on-premises in a fully managed offering. Google Anthos, Azure Stack, are also similar offerings by cloud providers:

Figure 1.3 – AWS Outposts for on-premises

On a heterogeneous hybrid cloud, we have seen technologies and platforms from Red Hat, Pivotal Cloud Foundry (acquired by VMware), Nutanix, and so on that provide abstraction layers and create hybrid environments across distinct technology platforms.

Making public and private clouds work together should not be an afterthought. Create a comprehensive plan that accounts for applications, automation, management, and technology stack.

Increasing footprint

In terms of stats, Gartner reckons that “by 2026 cloud spending is forecasted to exceed $1 trillion USD worldwide, exceeding all other IT markets. The drivers for this healthy state of affairs include cloud variations (such as hybrid IT and multiclouds. By 2020, 75% of organizations will have deployed a multicloud environments), which are now at the center of where the cloud hype currently is.”

Enterprises adopt different clouds because no one size fits all:

Figure 1.4 – Multi-cloud adoption by enterprises

This also brings in interesting questions that every architect and developer working in enterprise should try and find an answer to. Do you know which different clouds are adopted in your company and what percentage of applications in your organizations are portable and can run almost anywhere?

From various trends and reports, it is clear that companies looking at their future are choosing the hybrid cloud to take advantage of existing on-premises investments and the public cloud’s scalability. A hybrid cloud provides the best of both worlds by giving the control and ability to innovate. This can be complex and thus organizations need a strategy to determine which workloads will reside where.

Hybrid cloud use cases

Hybrid cloud has emerged as a popular solution for organizations looking to balance the benefits of public and private clouds while addressing the data security requirements, compliance needs for regulated applications, and performance and computing needs for applications running at remote edge locations. Here are four use cases that showcase the versatility and flexibility of the hybrid cloud in different industries:

• Security: A government agency uses a hybrid cloud approach to store sensitive national security data on a private cloud for maximum security while utilizing the public cloud for cost-effective data storage and processing for non-sensitive data.
• Proprietary Technology: A technology company uses a hybrid cloud approach to store and manage its proprietary software on a private cloud for maximum security and control while utilizing the public cloud for cost-effective development and testing. For example, financial service companies manage trading platforms on the private cloud for maximum control while using the public cloud for running simulations and back-testing algorithms.
• Competitive Edge: A retail company uses a hybrid cloud solution to store critical sales and customer information on a private cloud for security and compliance while utilizing the public cloud for real-time data analysis to gain a competitive edge by offering personalized customer experiences and insights.
• Telecom: A telecommunications company uses a hybrid cloud approach to securely store sensitive customer information on a private cloud while utilizing the public cloud for real-time data processing and analysis to improve network performance and customer experience. This approach helps the company maintain a competitive edge in the telecom sector by providing a superior network experience to its customers.

Understanding the benefits of hybrid cloud computing

A hybrid cloud provides a flexible solution. Many organizations have embraced and adopted the hybrid cloud. If we take an example of a cable company, Comcast (the world’s largest cable company), as per a technical paper published by Comcast for SCTE-ISBE, Comcast serves tens of millions of customers and hosts hundreds of tenants in eight regions and three public clouds. This is a great testimony of using a hybrid cloud for mission-critical workloads that need to run at scale.

Hybrid cloud is more popular than ever and some of the reasons that organizations are adopting a hybrid cloud are as follows:

• Time to market: With choices available to your IT teams to leverage appropriate resources as needed by use case, new applications and services can be launched quickly.
• Manage costs: Hybrid cloud helps you with optimizing and consuming resources efficiently. Make use of your current investments in existing infrastructure and when needed to scale, burst the workloads in the public cloud.
• Reduced lock-in: Going into the cloud may be appealing, but once in and when costs start to rise and eat the bottom line of the organization, it would be another costly proposition to reverse-migrate some of your applications from the public cloud. A hybrid cloud allows you to run anywhere and reduces your lock-in.
• Gaining a competitive advantage: In the competitive world of business, relying solely on public cloud technologies can put you at a disadvantage. To stay ahead of the competition, it’s important to maintain control over and ownership of cutting-edge technologies. This way, you can build and grow your business in an increasingly competitive environment.

For example, consider a telecommunications company that offers mobile services. By investing in and owning the latest advancements in wireless technology, the company can differentiate itself from other providers and offer a more seamless, high-speed network experience to its customers. This could result in more loyal customers and a stronger market position, giving the company a competitive edge in the telecommunications industry.

• Flexibility: With common operating systems and a hybrid cloud, you can run applications on any infrastructure or cloud.

A hybrid cloud is a great option when your organization is looking to benefit from the best of different computing worlds, and by adopting an open architecture, open source technologies, and vendor-agnostic solutions, you can increase your preparedness for hybrid and unseen future needs.