Katherine Noyes recently wrote for Linux.com on the topic of 5 Things to Make the Hybrid Cloud Enterprise-Ready. In her article, she discusses data that shows how a number of factors are just now beginning to fall into place that will propel the adoption of the hybrid cloud model.
From her article:
So, what are the benefits of the hybrid cloud for businesses, when compared to public and private?
There are also clearly many potential benefits to using a hybrid cloud. Flexibility, portability, choice and the ability to pay only for what you need, for example, are foremost among those benefits, said Michael Hubbard, senior director of VMware’s Accelerate Advisory Services.
So, too, is the ability to “align application SLAs [service-level agreements] to the proper virtual data center, which may or may not sit inside your four walls,” Hubbard explained.
Indeed, “there’s a whole lot of complexity associated with building your own internal private cloud,” noted Brett Goodwin, vice president of marketing with cloud computing provider Skytap. “A lot of the technology is still fairly young and evolving quickly.”
As for public clouds, “they’re great for applications where you want people to be able to access it over the internet,” Goodwin added. “But even in multitenant environments, there can be accessibility or security concerns.”
The hybrid cloud, on the other hand, “really gives you the best of both worlds: the elasticity, scalability and agility that the public cloud brings, but also the control, visibility and security that the private cloud offers,” he said.
At the present time, however, the article explains that the concept of the hybrid cloud is not well understood. (See Fig. 1 above: Skytap Hybrid Cloud Model.)
“Part of the challenge is terminology,” Skytap’s Goodwin suggested. “People understand what a private cloud is, and what a public cloud is,” but hybrid clouds are perhaps less easily understood.
Nevertheless, “we believe the hybrid cloud is really where we’re going to see enterprises benefit from cloud computing in a big way,” he added.
In order for the hybrid cloud to be enterprise-ready, experts suggest that the following things will need a bit more work:
- Visibility and Control
- Security
- Integration
- Data Synchronization
- Licensing and Support
Read the full article to learn more about what the experts say could be improved in each of these areas. And to learn more about how Skytap Cloud helps enterprises with hybrid cloud solutions, view our webinar: Extending Private Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud Computing.
