If your business is charting a course to the cloud – or if you’ve already deployed a limited cloud solution but want to expand your usage and capabilities over time – you may be wondering about the choices available. What is hybrid cloud? Is it a good fit for my company’s needs? What can hybrid cloud offer me? Though the options may look confusing, your organization’s requirements and growth path will point you toward the right cloud environment. As you weigh what’s important and how you want your digital transformation journey to unfold, consider how a hybrid cloud solution can help you get there.

Features of a hybrid cloud

A hybrid cloud brings together some of the key components of both private cloud and public cloud structures. Hybrid cloud features the ability to leverage the highly secure single-tenant environment that characterizes private cloud and blends it with the broad scalability and ease of use of public cloud. Companies with a hybrid cloud solution have several environments they can choose from to power their compute and data storage requirements, giving them the benefits of each type of cloud structure.

Resources that make private cloud a good solution remain available in a hybrid cloud, so businesses can support those workloads that are best suited to that type of dedicated environment. Applications that require little or no latency are good examples, because the organization can continue to prioritize those on the network and ensure users have the fastest experience possible. In addition, enterprises that need to accommodate unique workload requirements can utilize their private cloud environment for that purpose. Because the resources serve only one organization, the organization is able to tailor the hardware and software to their specific needs.

With the right hybrid structure in place, workloads can even transition between the private and public cloud environments within the overall cloud solution. This empowers the business to take real-time advantage of exactly the resources they need in the moment. That may mean avoiding latency during times of high use or enabling wider access when a greater number of users are expected to be active.

The beginnings of hybrid cloud

As organizations began to realize the value in using cloud technology to enable greater agility and move their digital transformation journeys forward, many became aware that both private and public cloud solutions had attractive features and each often had downsides that occasionally conflicted with their business needs or resulted in unwanted inefficiencies. The desire to tap into the advantages while avoiding the negatives led to the development of hybrid cloud solutions.

The blended conditions available in hybrid cloud gives enterprises the ability to shift data and workloads into the environment that best suits them, resulting in ultimate flexibility. Companies that had previously selected between private and public clouds no longer needed to choose just one solution, instead reaping the benefits of each in the areas that deliver the most value to them. Security, scalability, and strong vendor support came together in the form of hybrid cloud.

What does a hybrid cloud look like?

A company with a hybrid cloud environment has private cloud resources dedicated for their use, where they may choose to keep data and systems that performance best under those conditions. They can support applications with a low tolerance for latency and protect data with highly targeted security tools. The business has complete control over how the assets in their private sector of their cloud – such as storage space and compute power – are configured and utilized, giving them the ability to solve for complex or unique use cases.

This same hybrid cloud environment also gives the organization access to public cloud resources. Though some of their applications may be best suited to private cloud, those platforms that are built to make good use of the high scalability and ease of access in a public cloud environment can located there. The ability to quickly expand and add new resources are hallmarks of public cloud, and those remain available in a hybrid cloud solution.

Is a hybrid cloud solution a good fit for your business environment? The Carousel team is ready to help you evaluate your cloud needs and identify the best option for your organization.

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