Hybrid Clouds: An ideal choice for most businesses

If you create, use, store or retrieve data, you're almost certainly already using a hybrid cloud. If you're not, you should probably give it serious consideration.

The task can be as simple as managing emails on a variety of smartphones (yes, that’s a cloud application), or as complex as overhauling and relaunching your organization's network infrastructure. 

And it’s not just businesses that use cloud computing. For example, you could be an Army Colonel carrying out a sensitive order while logged on to the Pentagon network.

It may sound like an odd example, but years ago the Department of Defense embraced the hybrid cloud as part of a "data center consolidation plan" meant to help shrink its IT budget. In 2020, Bloomberg reports 100% of the budget will be spent on contracts. [1,2] 

Whether it's in the Pentagon or the private sector, cost-cutting is among benefits explored in this article.

Even a digital cloud is supposed to be flexible

Nobody likes either/or choices, especially when it comes to IT decisions. Deploying a hybrid cloud solution eliminates having to choose onsite versus offsite operations. It's the best of both worlds.

Enterprise users can run development and test workloads in the hybrid cloud, via configurable pay-as-you-use machines. We can create a test infrastructure to match the scale of your test—and just as quickly shutdown when testing is complete, yet without the facilities and management (etc.) that accompany an actual infrastructure.

Not-so-large enterprises breathe easier knowing that decisions to add onsite capacity need not be made in haste—it's not a "crisis" every time the IT department faces an unexpected increase in the need for backup, storage and processing speed. A managed hybrid cloud takes care of that for you.

Challenge is good

The hybrid cloud does include one particular challenge: 

It's not always easy to juggle in an infrastructure that includes a mix of onsite and offsite, plus public and private. Yet, as with any important IT decision, you need to:

• Assess the need.

• Choose your provider well.

We recommend you think of it this way – don't better opportunities (in this case technologies) always come with some initial challenges? Of course, they do, but the benefits and value of making the change outweigh not making the change.

If a hybrid cloud sounds like it might be a solution for you, we can help you navigate the challenges so your organization can realize the opportunities—quickly and affordably.