Why consider an AWS hybrid cloud option?

An AWS hybrid cloud comprises of an on-premise dedicated server, a private cloud, blended with the use of the Amazon Public Cloud (AWS), the different components are connected through an encrypted platform.  This offers multiple benefits.

Security– with a hybrid cloud using AWS, you can retain critical applications behind strong firewall security on your on-premise platform.  This has the benefit of restricting access to sensitive data. It is your choice as to whether that can be data accessed through the public cloud and what limits you want to place on that access.

Scalability– A hybrid cloud offers the ability to increase or decrease your architecture as your needs change.  For example, you might want to allow overflow into AWS when resource on your in house infrastructure reaches 100% of capacity, or even push some non-critical processes into the public cloud to avoid service interruption.

Stability – It is crucial to avoid downtime and to ensure data remains accessible.  A hybrid cloud lets you keep critical systems in-house and under your control rather than hosting them with a third party.

Could a hybrid cloud be the right solution for your business?

Choosing the best solution for your businesses IT infrastructure is a complicated process.  Technology progresses at such a fast pace, so the solution that your IT department specifies this year may not be optimal in the future.  Moving to a Hybrid Cloud using AWS or Azure to host certain aspects of your infrastructure can build flexibility for the long term and allow you to adapt more easily to business change.

Most companies today, have already taken steps to implement a level of a virtualised environment to save on future investment or perhaps begun to procure applications as SaaS to reduce one-off licensing costs.

But don’t get caught out

There are many things to consider in the planning stages before coming to a conclusion about what is best for your organisation.

Think about the skill sets required to implement, configure and maintain a hybrid cloud. Do you have them already within your team?

You could consider managing it in-house if you have a cloud server architect and development operations engineer on the team, or, opt for a managed cloud through an experienced provider who can offer suitable SLAs and 24/7 support.

You also need to acknowledge that there will be latency, however minimal, once you push data into the Amazon Cloud, so understanding the expectations from stakeholders about the accessibility of the data is also important.

Also moving to the cloud means you will have elements of your infrastructure that are on OpEx model instead of CapEx. This change to monthly costs that can rise and fall with usage can be a challenge if not handled correctly. Monitoring and alerting are possible within the out of the box tools but often a third party cloud management tool is used to monitor the cloud infrastructure as it changes over time to control costs as well as monitor and maintain cloud infrastructure. 

Is it tried and tested?

The hybrid cloud concept first began as a discussion back in 2008.  There are many businesses around the world who’ve used a hybrid cloud – HEINEKEN and specialist engineering company IMI plc to name a few. Again, and again, businesses choose Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure as their solution of choice because of their ability to provide a true full integration.

Read the IMI Plc case study here

Would you like to know more about how an AWS or Azure hybrid cloud can help you, and how we can help you manage your cloud with CloudOps?

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