How Hybrid IT Solutions Work, and Why You'd Want to Use Them.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of IT infrastructure, the term "hybrid cloud" has become increasingly prevalent. Organizations worldwide are exploring the possibilities it offers to balance on-premises resources, private cloud infrastructure, and public cloud services.
This article serves as your comprehensive guide to understanding, implementing, and reaping the benefits of a Hybrid Cloud Strategy.
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The Basics of Hybrid IT
Setting the Context
Before we delve into the intricacies of hybrid cloud strategies, let's set the stage by exploring the fundamental concept of a hybrid cloud strategy and why it holds such significance in today's IT landscape.
Definition of a Hybrid Cloud Strategy
A hybrid cloud strategy is a critical component for organizations aiming to optimize the allocation of applications and data across diverse cloud environments. In essence, it's the blueprint that dictates which elements reside in the public cloud, which in the private cloud, and the orchestration between them.
Components of a Hybrid Cloud
A typical hybrid cloud consists of two core elements: public cloud infrastructure (often in the form of Infrastructure as a Service or [IaaS] or Platform as a Service [PaaS] offerings by public cloud providers) and private cloud infrastructure, which can be on-premises or hosted as a managed service by a third party.. These components work together harmoniously, connected via a secured, wide area network (WAN) connection.
Realizing the Use Cases
Hybrid clouds offer versatile solutions for various scenarios, making them increasingly attractive to organizations worldwide. Here are some primary use cases:
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity (DR/BC): Hybrid clouds provide an ideal platform for storing critical data backups and snapshots off premise in a secure cloud environment. This setup can enable rapid recovery in the event of a disaster, minimizing downtime and data loss, while minimizing operational cost during normal operations by not maintaining active cloud compute resources in the DR location.
Cloudbursting: Mature organizations can harness the power of public cloud services during seasonal periods of high demand. Spinning up additional compute resources in a public cloud during peak volume that may occur only a few days in the year has promised to eliminate the need to over-provision on-premises equipment that would be rarely used. However, consideration must be made for accommodating latency impacts when data is passed between resources deployed in multiple data center locations. Advances in application architecture and data management technologies have begun to make Cloudbursting more feasible.
New Development/untested workloads: Modern devops practices and improvements in automation has reduced the demand for permanently maintained development and test environments used in traditional waterfall development. These leads many organizations to adopt a hybrid cloud strategy by leaving legacy development activities on-premise, where operational costs are more static and moving new development into a public cloud. With proper automation in a devops build pipeline, resources are only deployed when required and destroyed when no longer needed, optimizing the resource and cost model for development of new business workloads.
Building Your Hybrid Cloud Strategy
Creating an effective hybrid cloud strategy requires careful consideration and planning. Here are the key steps to get started:
Application Assessment: Begin with an evaluation of your existing applications, both legacy and modern, to identify candidates for migration to the public cloud. Factors to consider include application architecture, security, compliance, cost, and technology compatibility with cloud providers’ offerings.
Consistent Cloud Architecture: Your strategy should be based on a consistent cloud architecture that spans both public and private clouds. It is imperative to have defined standards for deployment, usage, configuration management, security, and reporting. This approach simplifies orchestration and management, controls costs, and ensures seamless workload portability.
The 'Seven Rs' Methodology
The "7 R's" in cloud migration are a framework commonly used to guide the strategy for moving applications, data, and other components from an on-premises data center to a cloud environment. These strategies considered algorithmically can help organizations decide how to best approach the migration process. The 7 R's are:
Rehost ("Lift and Shift"): This involves moving applications and data to a cloud environment without making significant changes. It's often the fastest migration method, but doesn't take full advantage of cloud-native features.
Refactor / Re-architect: In this approach, applications are modified or completely re-architected to better suit the cloud environment, often to take advantage of cloud-native capabilities like scalability and flexibility. This can be more time-consuming and costly but can yield better long-term benefits.
Revise ("Lift, Tinker, and Shift"): This strategy involves partially modifying the application before moving it to the cloud. It's a middle ground between rehosting and refactoring, where some optimizations are made to leverage the cloud but without a full re-architecture.
Replatform ("Lift, Tweak and Shift"): Here, the core architecture of the application remains the same, but it's optimized to take advantage of some cloud capabilities. This might involve minor changes to the application's code to improve performance and scalability in the cloud.
Repurchase ("Drop and Shop"): This approach involves moving to a different product, typically a cloud-native solution. This could mean adopting Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings, where the organization stops using an on-premises application and starts using a cloud-based application.
Retain ("Keep"): Sometimes, an organization may choose to keep certain applications or components in their existing environment due to compliance, technical, or business requirements. This is often part of a hybrid cloud strategy.
Retire ("Remove"): Identifying applications or components that are no longer useful and can be turned off. This step helps in optimizing resources and costs post-migration.
What's the Difference Between Multi-Cloud Strategy and Hybrid Cloud Strategy?
Two terms often mentioned in discussions are "multi-cloud strategy" and "hybrid cloud strategy." While they may sound similar, they represent distinct approaches to managing cloud resources. Understanding the differences between these strategies is crucial for making informed decisions about your organization's IT infrastructure. Let's break down the distinctions:
Multi-Cloud Strategy
Definition: A multi-cloud strategy involves using multiple cloud providers to host different aspects of your organization's application workloads or services. This approach often includes a combination of public cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and others.
Characteristics:
Vendor Diversity: In a multi-cloud strategy, organizations intentionally choose different cloud providers to avoid vendor lock-in. This diversity can offer more flexibility in selecting services and pricing structures.
Best-of-Breed Solutions: Organizations can select the best-suited cloud provider for each specific application or workload, optimizing performance, cost, and features.
Risk Mitigation: Diversifying across multiple cloud providers can mitigate the risk of service outages or disruptions from a single provider.
Complexity: Managing multiple cloud providers can be complex, as it requires expertise in each provider's tools, services, and billing structures.
Cost Management: While cost optimization is possible in a multi-cloud strategy, it can also be challenging to track and manage expenses across multiple providers effectively.
Key Differences Between Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Cloud
Resource Location: In a multi-cloud strategy, resources are spread across various cloud providers, while a hybrid cloud strategy combines self-managed, on-premise resources, private and public cloud resources.
Data Mobility: Hybrid clouds prioritize the seamless movement of data and workloads between environments, while multi-cloud environments typically involve less integration between cloud environments.
Control and Consistency: A hybrid cloud strategy aims for a consistent, integrated experience across environments, whereas multi-cloud environments may vary in terms of tools and management.
Use Cases: Multi-cloud strategies are often chosen for flexibility and avoiding vendor lock-in, while hybrid clouds are ideal for organizations with a mix of on-premises and cloud-based needs.
Potential Challenges in Hybrid Cloud Strategies
While the benefits of a hybrid cloud strategy are compelling, challenges are inevitable. Here are some common hurdles organizations may face:
Complexity: Managing multiple public cloud providers and integrating public and private cloud environments can be complex and requires a broad set of skills. Well-established standards and collaboration between different cloud teams is crucial to resolving issues effectively.
Cost Management: Unexpected costs, such as additional software licenses, underutilized virtual machines, and data egress charges, can arise when integrating public and private cloud operations. Careful planning and constant monitoring is essential to mitigate these expenses.
Scalability: Achieving scalability across a hybrid cloud can be challenging, especially when dealing with private cloud applications isolated by on-premises firewalls. Proper architecture and planning are necessary for efficient cloud bursting.
Tooling and Integration: A hybrid cloud strategy may involve multiple tools, integrations, and vendors. Choosing the right tools for each use case is essential, as one-size-fits-all solutions may not suffice.
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Start your conversationThe Benefits of a Hybrid Cloud Strategy
Despite the challenges, organizations can reap significant rewards from a well-executed hybrid cloud strategy. Here are some key advantages:
Data Security: Hybrid clouds can offer best-in-class security tooling and capabilities, enabling robust data protection and ensuring compliance with regulations like HIPAA, PCI, and GDPR. Cloud-based backup provides off-site protection of critical data assets and can enable fast recovery with appropriate Disaster Recovery design..
Innovation: The flexibility of hybrid clouds empowers R&D teams to experiment without hefty infrastructure investments. It facilitates application modernization, enhancing business agility.
Business Agility: Hybrid clouds offer the agility needed to respond quickly to market demands, reduce time-to-market for new applications, and adapt to changing business needs.
Scalability: Hybrid clouds seamlessly handle demand spikes by utilizing public cloud resources, eliminating the need for precise resource projections.
Time-to-Market: Organizations can deploy new infrastructure rapidly, reducing the waiting time associated with traditional procurement cycles.
Case Studies:
In conclusion, a well-defined hybrid cloud strategy is the linchpin for organizations seeking to harness the power of cloud computing while maintaining control over their infrastructure. However, an unmanaged hybrid-cloud environment can quickly lead to unnecessary complexity and out of control costs. By carefully planning, establishing governance and standards, and addressing challenges as they arise, businesses can navigate the complex cloud landscape, optimize their IT costs, and drive innovation.
Where should you start with a Hybrid IT Strategy?
The Cavan Group has been helping our clients build mature hybrid cloud environments by developing clear workload hosting strategies, assisting in the selection of hosting partners and providers, and through other program management engagements.
We are a specialty IT consulting firm focused on Workload placement strategy, hosting solutions and workload migrations for enterprise clients across all industry sectors. The company was founded in 1994 and has since grown to become one of the most respected and competent consulting organizations in the technology sector.
If you're interested in implementing a Hybrid IT solution for your business, reach out to us to have a chat today.
