Many organizations are involved with the cloud today, whether they are aware of the fact or not. Many companies host websites and email systems off-site, located in a data center they don’t know about. Other solutions, such as corporate file servers, might be in the company data center or in a colocation facility. But to really get the business going, from a technical view, it makes the most sense to combine everything into one unified front. This is where a hybrid cloud comes in.
Before we showcase how a hybrid cloud can help your business, it is essential to understand exactly what the hybrid cloud is. A hybrid cloud is a computing environment with a mix of private and public clouds working together. The magic behind the hybrid cloud is that it allows for these systems to call work together to complete business tasks, which means there is a lot more flexibility in how things deployed. This can also act as a significant source of cost savings, as a server that is at capacity can share the workload with a public cloud server to work more effectively and efficiently.
Let’s take a look at how this can work. A software-hosting company uses public cloud servers to host its website, while private cloud servers handle database work and running the actual applications. In a scenario where significant load is being placed on the application (perhaps during a busy season, like tax software would see during April), the cloud can be configured to offload some of those application servers into the public cloud, alleviating the load on the application servers and avoiding the need to invest the capital into buying more of them. Meanwhile, the database servers can remain in a private environment, if that is the Company’s desired configuration. This keeps the benefits of the private environment while being able to take advantage of the flexibility and scale that the public cloud provides.
This concept pairs very well with customers that utilize our colocation and dedicated server offerings, as they can utilize vnCloud to obtain the ability to leverage a public cloud environment when the need arises, and they can then return to normal operations when the additional horsepower is no longer required. Not only that but by combining our services to achieve a hybrid cloud, you get a complete IT solution that simplifies IT and removes the issues that might be experienced by hosting any of your servers at your business. A solution we worry about your power and internet needs instead of you having to manage that in addition to your applications. So you get all of the benefits of the hybrid cloud, and we manage the hassle so you can focus on what you need to.
Why Should Your Business Go Hybrid?
When looking to implement your server infrastructure, you may be looking at whether to utilize your own infrastructure in a private environment, or leveraging the massive scale of a public cloud. However, many companies are coming to the realization that they want to do both, which is where hybrid environments come into play. To truly grasp the benefits of the hybrid cloud, it is important to identify the pros and cons of both public and private clouds.
Private clouds are completely within an organization’s control, as they are founded out of either their own equipment or servers that are only used by that Company, which on paper sounds like the best route to take. In some cases, it may be – a Private Cloud is powered by servers within the Company’s control and all of their resources are at their disposal. However, this complete control also comes with the complete bill – the Company will need to foot 100% of the bill for all of their equipment, whether they utilize the resources or not. So if a company needs to have 10 servers operational to handle the holiday load in November and December, they are stuck paying for those resources from January to October. Even if they rent out the equipment as dedicated servers, they still need to pay for all the resources in the machine, so if you are paying for 4 GB of RAM and you only use 1 GB, you are usually stuck paying for what you don’t need.
Public clouds, in contrast, emphasize flexibility and scalability. Need to have 10 servers on the weekend and only 2 during the week? With the cloud, you can spin those machines upon demand, and create new ones in less than 5 minutes instead of waiting to install software and applications on new equipment. Even if you get a surprise surge of activity and need to double your infrastructure instantly, you are able to do so easily within a public cloud environment – just requisition the resources within your dashboard, and the resources are yours to deploy. However, in a public scenario, you are using someone else’s infrastructure, and while security protocols are almost always in place, there are concerns that public clouds are not as secure as private environments. In the case of some regulatory agencies, using a public cloud is literally not an option as it would violate the terms of the organization in question.
This is where a hybrid environment comes into play. Within a hybrid environment, you can store sensitive client information such as credit card information in the private servers in the network while utilizing the public cloud to build your storefront, which needs the ability to expand and contract to accommodate customer demand. So in the scenarios detailed above, hybrid clouds significantly curb the resources vs. cost issue seen in the private scenario by adding the ability to add new resources as needed in the public infrastructure, while being able to store sensitive data in the public environment, resolving the concern seen in the public cloud scenario. This is the primary benefit of a private cloud.
Of course, these aren’t the only benefits – companies can utilize the public cloud to test new applications before taking them inside the private network to implement their new software. For big data crunching that needs expansive resources that might be beyond the organization’s existing infrastructure capabilities, they can tap into their public cloud to gain access to the computing might be needed, while shifting the results into the private environment and resolving the concerns for security that exist with the public cloud.
Private clouds can be set up with either your own infrastructure or by utilizing Vault Networks Dedicated servers. Additional protections and availability can be applied when using your own infrastructure by using our colocation services. As for the public piece, our vnCloud platform provides a highly available public cloud solution to utilize for your applications that need to be scalable.
To learn more about our services, and how hybrid cloud can help to take your business to the next level, have one of our friendly experts contact you to begin the conversation. We will be more than happy to find the right mix of colocation, dedicated server, and vnCloud to help you meet and exceed your goals.
• Call: 305 735 8098. Ext. 2
• Chat with a member of our team to discuss which solution best fits your needs.