What is a Hybrid Cloud?
According to Gartner’s definition, “Hybrid cloud computing refers to policy-based and coordinated service provisioning, use, and management across a mixture of internal and external cloud services.”
This is a very concise definition of hybrid cloud, but it is complete. It mentions that it is policy-based and can be multiple internal and external cloud services. This is important as companies would like to benefit from the flexibility and agility of combining different cloud services but will still need to be able to manage them with a single policy-based management interface.
A bit of background
The concept is not new. IT teams and Developers (nowadays we call them DevOps teams) have been juggling multi-cloud environments for the last decade already. One way or another, they were forced to move some applications to AWS, some to Azure, and some to GCP. Most of the time, a lack of on-prem capacity or the development and testing flexibilities that cloud providers bring to the table caused the applications to move to hybrid cloud solutions already. A bit blindly back then, with no way to manage end-to-end. Most of the time, resulting in forgotten capacities, cloud services are provisioned here and there, resulting in hidden costs and potential security issues for IT operations. But now there are Vendors and operators in the market that allow customers to manage multiple cloud environments that stretch between private clouds and multiple public clouds. Vendors such as BMC, Nutanix, Terraform, and F5, or Service Integrators and Operators such as Orange Business now offer Hybrid Cloud Computing either as a platform or as a managed service to companies. The main objective is to provide customers with a seamless and flexible solution that allows them to leverage the benefits of both private and public clouds. This enables companies to optimize their infrastructure, reduce costs, and improve scalability. Whether it’s through a vendor or an operator, the goal remains the same: to empower organizations to achieve greater agility and innovation in their IT environments.
Why has it become so popular?
Simply because almost all business processes and applications nowadays are digitalized, they are already or are in the process of being updated to support working independently of the type of underlying infrastructure.
This new reality, combined with the constant push for more agility and lower costs, drives the IT team to approach cloud services as commodities. We all know now that cloud services provide a level of flexibility and accessibility that traditional on-premises infrastructure cannot match at a fraction of the cost. The missing capability until now was the maturity to maintain a single management interface and single reporting and service levels across multiple cloud providers and different types of infrastructure.
Top 5 must-have features of Hybrid Cloud management
If we look at all the features of the cloud management platforms and service provider capabilities, below are the top 5 must-have features:
- Ability to integrate with multiple private and public cloud providers
- Service Level Agreements and Overall End-to-End Service Level Reporting
- Consolidated inventory, service management, reporting, and analytics
- Centralized security management and integration with corporate IAM
- Cost optimization and usage tracking
These five features are the absolute minimum expected from Hybrid Cloud management. There are many different options on the market with additional WOW features, such as an AI engine to optimize cloud resources for performance and cost reduction and security features that will prevent any developer from making any mistakes when configuring a new cloud environment. As always, in the future, these features will also become the norm.
Security and Regulatory issues with using a Hybrid Cloud model
Unfortunately, hybrid cloud models pose security and regulatory challenges. Data and applications are distributed across various cloud providers and on-premises infrastructure, creating risks of unauthorized access, data breaches, and compliance violations.
In recent years, regulatory bodies have released guidelines or restrictions governing how cloud services can be used by national companies or any company that processes and stores data within their country. Some examples in the GCC are the UAE’s Information Assurance (IA) Regulation and Saudi Arabia’s Cloud Computing Regulatory Framework.
Organizations deploying Hybrid Cloud models may face severe penalties and reputational damage if they fail to comply with these regulations. Most applications running on hybrid clouds involve data transfer and storage in multiple locations. Therefore, the risk of data breaches increases. As a result, organizations must have robust data security protocols and measures in place to protect sensitive data. Before moving forward with a hybrid cloud model, a thorough risk assessment should be performed to identify potential vulnerabilities and address them appropriately.
