Insights

In recent years, we have seen the widespread adoption of cloud technology in many organisations.

Migrating to the cloud has a wide number of advantages for organisations, increasing business agility and flexibility to help drive an innovative IT strategy.

The power of cloud computing can no longer be ignored but while some organisations have been well suited to fully migrating to the cloud, others are unable to move all their data and systems into the cloud, or at least not immediately. This is where hybrid cloud comes in, allowing businesses to benefit from the best of both options and tailor their choice to their needs; after all, there is no ‘one size fits all’ model for business IT.

What is it?

The hybrid cloud is defined as an integration between a public cloud (such as Microsoft Azure) and a private cloud (private virtualised infrastructure).

Essentially the hybrid cloud allows you to pick and mix the best features of on-premise and public cloud infrastructure to suit your specific needs. The key to a hybrid cloud solution is a seamless experience so your employees never can fluidly navigate between the two without noticing.

Why hybrid?

Implementing a hybrid cloud gives businesses the ability to leverage the benefits from both on-premise technology and cloud computing to create an optimised infrastructure. However, while both have distinct benefits there are also key considerations to each, which must be taken into account.

Cloud benefits vs considerations

Cloud benefits

• Highly scalable, flexible and future-proof
• Rapid provisioning and deployment
• Allows IT budget to move towards an Opex model
• Ability to access documents and applications anywhere
• Improve mobile and offsite working
• Rapidly advancing technology
• Removes administration and housekeeping of infrastructure

Cloud key considerations

• Reliance on connectivity
• Bandwidth
• Cloud provider security (for more information on security for Microsoft read our article here)

On-premise benefits vs considerations

On-Premise benefits

• End to end control of infrastructure

On-Premise key considerations

• Large upfront capital costs for infrastructure
Hardware maintenance required – time and resources
• Limited to the size and ability of your hardware
• Less flexibility
• Requires physical space within your office and associated overheads
• Environmental impact (power, A/C etc.)

Understand your business needs

The key to a successful hybrid cloud strategy is having a complete understand of your business and its strategy. Deploying a hybrid cloud model can have a positive impact on how your business runs and how effectively your employees can work; not just now, but also in the future. The challenge can be knowing what to run in the cloud, what to run on-premise and how to connect the two seamlessly.

We have worked with all of our clients to help them gain the benefits of hybrid cloud technology, assessing each business and creating a customised cloud strategy to meet their key requirements. We love showing businesses simple solutions and believe that technology should be a powerful enabler that helps your business to grow.

If you’re unsure of how to migrate to the cloud, or you are unhappy or concerned with your current IT infrastructure then contact us today.