7 benefits of a Hybrid Cloud solution

7 Reasons your business could benefit from a Hybrid Cloud

Adoption of cloud computing technology has significantly increased over the last few years, promising a great opportunity for innovation amongst businesses. However some businesses are still sceptical of how Cloud Computing can enhance or replace all or part of their IT environment.

Cloud is typically marketed to promote benefits such as improved efficiency, flexibility and even opportunity for expansion. However many of these benefits lack tangibility, often making it difficult to validate a move to the cloud.

Organisations considering the change typically look at implementing a solution that incorporates a mix of on premise, and public or private cloud, referred to as a hybrid cloud model.

Below is a list of real world benefits that organisations can realise if moving to one of iseek’s private cloud solutions.

NUMBER 1 – Business Continuity

Business continuity has been identified as one of the most important elements of business operations. A business continuity solution is not just simply backing up and/or replicating content to the cloud, nor is it simply a Disaster Recovery plan. Business continuity is to continue to do business during a failure or disaster. In basic terms, it means that when a failure or disaster happens, that data is still accessible with little to no downtime.

A business continuity solution therefore needs to be planned to consider key elements such as resilience, recovery and contingency. Hybrid cloud solutions are often considered by organisations as a key component of a business continuity solution where critical data is replicated to a cloud solution in a different location to the primary systems. This provides data insurance in the event of a disaster (natural or technological), minimising downtime and the costs associated with such an event. Understanding this benefit, service providers have streamlined their offerings to easily integrate a business continuity solution into hybrid cloud systems.

NUMBER 2 – More Opportunity For Innovation

Barriers to innovation are reduced in a cloud environment, as large capital expenditure is not required for modelling a new service. Previously, cost associated with such a task would include capital expenditure for infrastructure, labour and time for research then more resources to install and maintain. This places a lot of pressure on capacity management practices and perfect forecasting despite many uncertain variables. In hybrid cloud, concepts can be tested without capital expenditure, prototyped in a cloud environment then rapidly deployed and measured for success. The added benefit of hybrid cloud is the availability of resources combining both internal and external environments including data, network, and infrastructure, all available on iseek’s cloud environment.

NUMBER 3 – Scalability

Scaling on IT infrastructure can be extremely expensive, inefficient and places much more pressure on accurate forecasting in growing companies. However, a hybrid cloud environment can provide the opportunity for businesses to scale out to a cloud environment for specific workloads. Implementing automation rules on the cloud provides the ability to scale resources up and down as business demands change. This allows the hybrid cloud system to take advantage of unlimited resources based on demand driven usage, optimising the environment for performance and efficiency.

NUMBER 4 – Increased Speed To Market
In many organisations, speed to market is a key differentiator. In a digital age, the ability to quickly spin up environments to test, prototype and launch new products is highly desirable. For organisations with an IT infrastructure that is working near or close to capacity, spinning up a new environments can become a challenge and potentially hinder the business

Hybrid cloud allows resources to be deployed and commissioned in an automated process that can yield results at hugely improved speeds, so companies are no longer limited by their IT footprint.

NUMBER 5 – Risk Management (test the waters)

Companies can leverage hybrid cloud as the first step in moving to a predominately cloud environment. A hybrid solution provides the perfect opportunity for companies to test the capability of certain workloads and providers in a cloud based environment and assist them in planning their cloud strategy. However planning is key, as hybrid cloud can require complex design to coherently combine an organisation’s platform with a cloud environment.

NUMBER 6 – Improved Connectivity

When moving components of your business to the cloud there can be problems deriving from network performance that impact critical applications. This can be difficult to prevent, especially during peak traffic periods and is a result of irregular public internet performance. iseek’s Hybrid Cloud platform can mitigate this issue by leveraging iseek’s connectivity solutions to guarantee bandwidth between on premise and cloud locations, improving performance by reducing distance-based latency.

NUMBER 7 – Secure Systems

There is an argument to be made that network security is compromised in public cloud environments. This can be expected as data is no longer kept entirely in a private location across private systems but rather accessed via the internet. However, a private hybrid cloud system allows much more control in design and architecture and a higher level of data security than public cloud solutions. iseek’s Private Cloud is located in our own data centres providing a well-protected layer of security. This is attained through a secure physical infrastructure in the data centre, logical protection in system design, local defence through company processes and safety precautions such as an ISO27001 certification.

The hybrid cloud has an obvious potential to benefit many organisations, however it is dependent on each situation and the desired outcome. There is rarely a one solution fits all scenario when it comes to complex IT infrastructure. It is therefore important to understand each and every critical variable in order to make informed, aligned and beneficial decisions. With the flexibility it provides, a hybrid cloud solution will very likely be able to meet your needs, enhance your business or solve a complex business problem. The first step is to reach out and discover which of these many business benefits your organisation could be taking advantage of.