Regardless of its criticism, technology has undoubtedly improved people’s lives in the last decade. Individually, technology has dramatically improved communication through the development of various social media platforms and the innovation in hardware like cell phones and laptops. All significant organizations that operate widely rely on some form of technology for their operations. These days, the concern of businesses and institutions pertains to the need for greater efficiency with the lowest costs because the technology is readily accessible; this is where the use of a hybrid cloud comes into play. So what is hybrid cloud? Read more to find out.
A hybrid cloud generally pertains to using public and private clouds by one organization to manage its operations. The primary purpose of this technology is to make a united, efficient, and automated environment flexible.
A private cloud is the data behind a company’s firewall, using a company’s own personal data centers. Public clouds are subscription services offered to companies for easier workflow.
A hybrid cloud’s two general uses are non-critical and critical activities. Non-critical activities like record keeping and computing numbers from raw data are done in a public cloud to maintain data privacy and operation confidentiality since businesses wouldn’t want their secrets compromised. Meanwhile, critical activities like data collection from clients, customers, students, and employees are done in private clouds. Currently, there are only five companies that provide a hybrid cloud service in the market. To make the mix of these clouds easier, these companies also offer other software that enables users to integrate information and create a seamless operation easily. Overall, companies can use their private cloud to store sensitive data while simultaneously using the public cloud’s computational power.
There are many advantages to using a hybrid cloud service. For one, it is far more cost-efficient than forcing a company to build its technology from the ground. It also helps cost management because a company only needs the same computational power and robust systems. The flexibility of a hybrid cloud ensures that they only use what the company needs. Second, the readily available resources in the public cloud help company shift focus from technology development to research that can directly help generate profits. The public cloud can help in better record-keeping, which can be very stressful manually. The third advantage is better adaptability and scalability because they can quickly expand depending on the company’s needs when the demand suddenly rises. Generally, a hybrid cloud gives businesses and companies greater control over their private data.
However, like everything else, there will always be disadvantages to every new form of technology. First, while cost-efficient in the long term, the initial investment in cloud services will still be expensive for small to medium enterprises. Second is the issue of linking these cloud services since it will have to merge public and private even with the software provided by third-party companies, which can still pose uncertainties. The third is the issue of reliability; since there are currently five major companies that offer hybrid cloud, the performance of the technology relies on their ability to deliver the service correctly. If these companies’ operations are down, then the management of other companies can also be affected.
If companies opt not to use a hybrid cloud and operate on a large scale, chances are that there will be redundancies in their cloud operations due to needing to switch between environments.
Typical users of hybrid cloud are universities, healthcare, and finance. The stated sectors benefit from the technology because they all contain sensitive information like patient records, student grades and transcript, and financial data, all of which needs to be protected. Still, at the same time, these sectors also need to record transactions and compute for financial analysis, which is where a public cloud comes into play.
