Ever notice how people tend to shudder every so slightly at the word “hybrid”? It seems as though the word carries a connotation that if something is a hybrid, it is inherently “half bad.” There are plenty of examples to fuel this sentiment. Hybrid cars, while environmentally and financially friendly (boasting half the gasoline consumption of a standard vehicle) are often small, sluggish and let's face it, neither comfortable nor attractive.
Riverfront Times, St. Louis' alternative newsweekly, has published a fairly extensive article on the perils of the hybridization of country and rap music. The article criticizes a retooling of Kenny Rogers', “The Gambler” by Haitian rapper Wyclef Jean, among five other “terrible” collaborations. Then, of course, there's the countless Hollywood villains that epitomize the “half-bad” with their hybrid embodiment as zombies, minotaurs, sea creatures, The Borg and, of course, Darth Vader.
Without doubt, hybrids of any kind run the risk of being perceived as doomed or ill-fated. So, why are so many organizations turning to hybrid cloud solutions to address their IT challenges? Simply, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) from a cloud provider’s data center allows you to retain control and focus on your core business needs without completely re-architecting existing infrastructure. Many organizations are taking a hybrid cloud approach, using both private and public cloud resources to seamlessly move workloads between your on-site data center and the public cloud. The cloud becomes an extension of your premises-based infrastructure and gives you new ways to extend your capabilities and increase agility. For example, you can:
- Reduce your operating expenses by offloading workload or even entire sections of infrastructure to the cloud
- Increase efficiency, speed-up deployment of critical updates and eliminate developmental pipeline bottlenecks by providing access to flexible resources in the cloud
- Respond immediately to dynamic spikes in demand, such as seasonal peaks, without increased capital expense, by allocating cloud resources as needed and releasing them when demand subsides
It's no wonder that according to Cisco, nearly 62% of all workloads were processed in the cloud in 2016, up 10% from just two years ago. As the total workload in the cloud grows steadily greater, it's apparent that almost any business is going to be reliant on cloud processing, at least in part, further paving the way for the adoption of hybrid cloud services.
Choose your hybrid cloud service wisely
Not all hybrid cloud services are created equal. Commodity-based services, for instance, are typically hindered by cloud architectures that limit flexibility and workload mobility. They provide best-effort performance and may offer insufficient SLAs. Security, compliance and data privacy are often inadequate as well.
Your business' success depends on the reliability of your IT solutions as well as meeting the needs of your customers. So, look for a provider that can offer a solution that's just right for your business. An IaaS provider should offer you:
- Enterprise-class performance and reliability
- End-to-end security
- Scalability
- Reliable SLAs
- 24x7 Support
- An interest in understanding your business
If the idea of a hybrid cloud solution is still intimidating, there are plenty of great organizations that can help you navigate unfamiliar terrain. And before you write off the quality of hybrids, remember, we wouldn't have seedless watermelon, naval oranges, mules, nor many of our favorite comic book heroes, without them.
Read the industry brief: An IT Checklist for Cloud-Based Global Architecture Solutions.
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