Stuck between the Public and Private Cloud? There’s a Hybrid Solution

Cloud Computing is on the rise. It is meant to grow and grow in the years to come as a more cost effective solution for software applications. Companies still have reservations over data security but they also want to use the advantages of the cloud to minimize costs and maximize ease of use from multiple locations. Businesses are reluctant to share their data with third party cloud service providers and may opt for a Private Cloud solution for employees, partners and customers.

Whereas, the Public Cloud is more efficient, as the cloud provider has established processes for repetitive tasks and larger resources, the private cloud is more secure, with in-house data retention. The advantages of both can be availed by integrating the two to form a Hybrid Cloud Solution.

A Hybrid Cloud is a combination of the Public and Private Cloud where there’s a cross between both environments. The goal is to combine the services and data from both in-house and external environments to achieve a more efficient IT setup.

For example a business can use Hybrid Cloud hosting to host their e-commerce website on a Private Cloud, where they have security and scalability, but the brochure site on a Public Cloud, where they get more cost effectiveness and require relatively less security. Similarly, an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model can proceed a Hybrid Cloud model to provide a financial business with storage from client data within a Private Cloud and allow collaboration on project planning documents in a Public Cloud environment – where they can be accessed by multiple users at different locations.

A Hybrid Cloud can have the following benefits:

• Cost Effectiveness: Public Clouds offer more significant economies of scale, such as centralized management, which bring better cost effectiveness than Private Clouds. Hybrid Clouds allow you to avail these savings for as many business functions as possible, while keeping sensitive operations and data secure.
• Scalability: Private Clouds do offer a certain amount of scalability, they dwarf when compared to the Public Cloud. Scalability with fewer boundaries can be achieved with the Public Cloud as resources are pulled from a larger Cloud infrastructure. Moving as many functions to the Public Cloud will benefit your business from Public Cloud scalability as well as reducing the burden from your Private Cloud.
• Security: The Private Cloud element of the Hybrid Cloud not only provides security where it is needed for sensitive operations, but can also satisfy regulatory requirements for data handling and storage where applicable.
• Flexibility: The availability of both a secure resource and scalable cost effective public resource can provide you with more opportunities to explore different operational avenues.

Public Cloud services with Private Cloud and in-house data centers are the new way of corporate computing. Integrating these two together is the main challenge for organizations intending to move towards a Hybrid Cloud setup.

Data Integration

The most common way businesses move towards a Hybrid Cloud environment is integration at the data level. This can be a tough task if the information is tightly controlled in your internal data center. The complexities increase when you start incorporating data from public cloud sources. However, this can be efficiently managed by regularly integrating Public and Private Clouds in your Hybrid Cloud environment.

Service Oriented Integration

Another way to integrate Public and Private Clouds is at a process level to form a Hybrid Cloud environment. An important element of Hybrid Cloud architecture is to integrate services together to form a virtual environment. Computing resources imitate other computing resources or whole computer systems to maximize performance and flexibility.

There are situations when integration can only occur at a data level. That data can be moved from a SaaS (Software as a Service) environment to a place that keeps records such as an ERP system.

An important aspect of Service Oriented approach at the process level is that the data you value also contains business logic processes that control the way the data is managed. So connecting data elements or business logic isn’t a simple task. You need deep understanding of how these systems behave from a business process perspective.

At Ephlux, we’re great at integration. We have a wide range of enterprise application integration services including, Oracle Fusion Middleware, as well as offering JD Edwards services. We’re ready to work on Cloud based integration solutions whether they may be Public, Private or Hybrid in nature. So which type of Cloud based infrastructure would you like to go for?