WHAT IS HYBRID CLOUD? 

A hybrid cloud is an integrated cloud service utilising both private and public clouds to perform distinct functions within the same organisation.


All cloud computing services should offer certain efficiencies to different degrees but public cloud services are likely to be more cost efficient and scalable that private clouds. With hybrid cloud, an organisation can maximise their efficiencies by employing public cloud services for all non-sensitive operations, only relying on a private cloud where they require it, with it ensuring that all platforms are seamlessly integrated.

Examples of how Hybrid Clouds can be used

Hybrid cloud models can be implemented in a number of ways:

• Separate cloud providers team up to provide both private and public services as an integrated service
• Individual cloud providers offer a complete hybrid package
• Organisations who manage their private clouds themselves sign up to a public cloud service, which they then integrate into their infrastructure

In practice, an enterprise could implement hybrid cloud hosting to host their e-commerce website within a private cloud, where it is secure and scalable, but their brochure site in a public cloud, where it is more cost effective (and security is less of a concern).

Alternatively, an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering, for example, could follow the hybrid cloud model and provide a financial business with storage for client data within a private cloud, but then allow collaboration on project planning documents in the public cloud – where they can be accessed by multiple users from a convenient location. 

Features

1. SCALABILITY
   Whilst private clouds do offer a certain level of scalability depending on their configurations (whether they are hosted internally or externally for example), public cloud services will offer scalability with fewer boundaries because resource is pulled from the larger cloud infrastructure. By moving as many non-sensitive functions as possible to the public cloud, it allows an organisation to benefit from public cloud scalability whilst reducing the demands on a private cloud
2. COST EFFICIENCIES
   Again, public clouds are likely to offer more significant economies of scale (such as centralised management), and so greater cost efficiencies, than private clouds. Hybrid clouds, therefore, allow organisations to access these savings for as many business functions as possible whilst still keeping sensitive operations secure.
3. SECURITY
   The private cloud element of the hybrid cloud model not only provides the security where it is needed for sensitive operations, but can also satisfy regulatory requirements for data handling and storage where it is applicable
4. FLEXIBILITY
   The availability of both secure resource and scalable cost effective public resource can provide organisations with more opportunities to explore different operational avenues

For example, an enterprise can deploy an on-premises private cloud to host sensitive or critical workloads, but use a third-party public cloud provider, such as Google Compute Engine, to host less-critical resources, such as test and development workloads. To hold customer-facing archival and backup data, a hybrid cloud could also use Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). A software layer, such as Eucalyptus, can facilitate private cloud connections to public clouds, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Hybrid cloud is particularly valuable for dynamic or highly changeable workloads. For example, a transactional order entry system that experiences significant demand spikes around the holiday season is a good hybrid cloud candidate. The application could run in private cloud, but use cloud bursting to access additional computing resources from a public cloud when computing demands spike. To connect private and public cloud resources, this model requires a hybrid cloud environment.

Another hybrid cloud use case is big data processing. A company, for example, could use hybrid cloud storage to retain its accumulated business, sales, test and other data, and then run analytical queries in the public cloud, which can scale to support demanding distributed computing task

Public cloud vs. private cloud and hybrid cloud

The term public cloud arose to differentiate between the standard cloud computing model and the private cloud, which is a proprietary cloud computing architecture dedicated to a single organization. Private cloud differs from public cloud, as it serves as an extension of a company's existing data center and is accessible only by that company.

A third model, the hybrid cloud, is maintained by both internal and external providers. In effect, a hybrid cloud is a combination of public and private cloud services, with orchestration between the two. In some cases, this model is attractive because it enables organizations to tap into the benefits of the public cloud, while maintaining their own private cloud for sensitive, critical or highly regulated data and applications.

Conclusion

Hybrid cloud can be an effective solution for a businesses with a tight focus on security or unique physical presence demands. Although there's seemingly less risk in a hybrid cloud model, a connection to the public cloud does have data security implications. This, however, is true of almost any public network communication.

And while the upfront cost of server hardware for the private end of the hybrid cloud is high, the control that IT departments can wield over hardware selection and system design for the private component offers an invaluable way of properly tailoring resources to the business's needs. Assembling a private cloud to handle a standard workload, with burst compute offloaded to the public cloud, can be a long-term budget-friendly arrangement.

Ultimately, hybrid cloud allows organizations to leverage public cloud pservices without offloading the entirety of their data to a third-party data center. This provides a great deal of flexibility in computing tasks, while keeping vital components within the company firewall.