In the emerging digital environment, cloud computing has become the buzz word. There are scaling demands, which are unpredictable. The team sizes are limited and resources too. It constrains the scaling. Cloud computing comes to our rescue in such circumstances.

Cloud computing makes it possible to scale up easily. There is server storage of data. There is remote access via internet from anywhere. The costs are controlled. How well a cloud performs depends on certain factors that maintain its stability.

In managed cloud services, the requirements are catered to by professional and skilled workforces which handle cloud-related activities. Managed Cloud Services provider provides features like disaster recovery, data backup and secure, scalable and reliable environment.

There are three main types of cloud environments — public clouds, private clouds and hybrid clouds. There is an additional community cloud too.

Public cloud is provided by an external agency. It ensures remote availability of its resources to the users. It has huge spaces to allow easy scalability. Public cloud offers services to multiple businesses via the internet on the pay-per-use basis. Cloud provider manages the creation and maintenance of resources.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and OpenStack offer public cloud services.

Businesses have the freedom to scale up and down to meet the demands.

Private cloud offers exclusive services to an individual, business or organisation. It makes better use of resources. It has the added advantage of remote server, rather than a shared server. Users do not have to share resources with anyone. It has dedicated access. Though there is better security and performance, it is costlier than the public cloud. It is an optimal solution for large-scale business seeking customization and additional security. It limits access to confidential data. It lets you move your data anywhere.

Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud is an amalgamation of the two main cloud deployment models — public and private. It is combined with the on-premise infrastructure and methods for an integrated solution.

In hybrid cloud, a data centre on premises is connected to a public cloud.

Community cloud is not very popular. Here the cloud infrastructure allows to access the services to share information. It may be operated by the organisation or by the third party service provider or by both.

Hybrid cloud brings different customers together to work on a centralised cloud infrastructure. It allows various organisations to work on a shared platform.

Private clouds work independently, that too behind firewall settings.

Hybrid cloud combines a private cloud with one or more public cloud services, with proprietary software enabling communication between each distinct service.

The best thing about hybrid cloud is its agility. In digital business, the main need is to adapt and change direction quickly.

The workload may demand cyclical resources, and you do not want to add permanent resources, then you can choose hybrid. It gives you better control on IT infrastructure.

In many organisations, there is data centre or cloud provider. One will have to do Business Impact Analysis and Cloud Readiness Assessment. These are for planning projects. You will come to know the existing workloads that require to be extended to clouds. You will also understand apps, users and data sets for cloud migration. While adopting Hybrid Cloud, you have first to select the hardware — server, storage, network, complete platforms. You have to choose Moonshot chassis, Nutanix platform and Cisco UCS or other blade-based systems.

Next, you have to create a virtual platform. A modern data centre is software-defined. One has to look at logical and virtual controls. Big Data is on a Hadoop cluster.

Then there are replication and distribution mechanisms. You have to know how data is moved, backed up and optimised. The data is either closer to the user or the bursts and branch locations are controlled. Data replication is a tedious process. Take security into consideration. Data must be secured at source, through the route, and at the destination.

Last, incorporate automation/orchestration. You have to set automation tasks. There are technologies — CloudPlatform, OpenStack, and Eucalyptus. These offer direct extensibility into a hybrid cloud. Automation makes replication and control easier.

The whole thing is subject to Management and Control.

There are three types of cloud computing services —

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).

Platforms-as-a-Service(PaaS)

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Hybrid Cloud: A Game Changer

A company cannot afford just a single public cloud or on-prem(ises) environment while dealing with voluminous data, and abiding by security regulatory requirements, and managing mission-critical applications. Almost all organisations in India are using varied combinations of hybrid cloud architecture.

The companies start by adopting hybrid cloud, and have to get business value from it. It is called harnessing the hybrid cloud. It facilitates business performance. There is seamless orchestration, management and application portability.

Five challenges in the Journey

IBM has identified five challenges while dealing with hybrid cloud. Varied workload, first of all is put, on multiple clouds, which makes the architecture complex and costly. It is also less secure and less likely to deliver outcomes.

Secondly, people work as if in silos. There is dearth of talent. There are few developers and engineers. The resources are not sufficient.

Third, there are unintegrated cloud components. That escalates the security risk.

Fourth, there is cost of moving data. Last, organisations have to deal with a number of eco-system partners in their journey to hybrid cloud.

Organisations will have to make concerted efforts to overcome these challenges. It is necessary to move away from a hybrid of clouds to a single integrated hybrid cloud platform. The components must not be discrete. There should be a complete system. Employees must possess critical cloud skills.

In the coming years, the demand for hybrid cloud will increase. Here technology serves as a fundamental source of competitive advantage. The core technologies in the digital age are the hybrid cloud, data, AI and security. Clients across the world are moving more workloads to the cloud, and automated processes.