The advantages of the Hybrid Cloud

Illustrating the Hybrid Cloud benefits to outsiders (CEOs or company owners) it is not that difficult. Perhaps there is no need to explain terms such as 'Private Cloud' or 'Public Cloud' or other 'technical' concepts. Instead, you can start from his/her daily management experience. Accessing external resources, perhaps temporarily, to correctly size (or even enhance) internal resources is an ordinary choice for most businesses and organizations.

It's that simple? Yes indeed!

The Hybrid Cloud declines this common-sense approach in the IT world.

Instead of possessing and managing hardware and software resources in the internal Data Center (Private Cloud), including resources that are seldom used, a company could keep on-premises the resources that it regular uses and 'rent' storage or computing or application capacity just when it needs them.

The Hybrid Cloud is also useful when compliance requirements with certain regulations is required (for example those on privacy or in health or financial industries). Ditto when the strategic value of certain data suggests to keep them 'at home'. Hybrid Cloud comes in handy when you want to experience with something new and don’t want to jeopardize standard business operations.

Virtualization platforms

That's all? As far as a CEO, owner, or shareholder is concerned, yes it is. It is pointless to transfer unsolicited notions that are not needed. Should a strategic choice toward Hybrid Cloud be made, the CIO and its staff will take care of all the technical details: for example it is important that the company has an in-house virtualization platform that could be extended to outsourced activities.

Flexibility and efficiency

Hybrid Cloud comes in many ‘flavors’. The company agrees with its Hybrid Cloud partner a Service Level Agreement (about hardware resources, calculation capacity, downtime, assistance and so on) allowing the necessary flexibility.

In the 'burst-in-Cloud' mode, for example, there is no a priori separation between the kind of data or the computing capabilities entrusted to the public Cloud. An application or a resource 'runs' in the Private Cloud and the external resource automatically intervenes should a peak of activity occurs.