Cloud computing is still in its early stages and organizations across verticals and geographies continue to make cloud a priority for their businesses. However, not every organization is ready to move all business applications to the cloud nor is the cloud able to support all kinds of applications. That’s why many enterprises opt for hybrid cloud deployments. But, what are these, anyway? Gartner defines hybrid cloud computing as “the coordinated use of cloud services across isolation and provider boundaries among public, private and community service providers or between internal and external cloud services.” This article focuses on hybrid cloud deployments, which are a mix of physical and virtual assets from a single provider.
A few years ago CloudSwitch’s leadership team, now a part of Verizon Enterprise Solutions, and other industry influencers began talking about hybrid cloud deployments and even said it was “the best of both worlds.” Security, lock-in and performance concerns were emerging and became important adoption obstacles and a combination of clouds could help solve some of the issues and ease the concerns. Around this time, many questioned hybrid cloud’s true definition, purpose and its differences with private clouds and data centers.
Overtime, cloud and IT infrastructure providers as well as enterprises began realizing the benefits of this heterogeneous solution and leveraging hybrid clouds where and when it made sense. Although there are more answers now than ever before, a few questions remain when exploring hybrid clouds.
One of the most important considerations when it comes to hybrid cloud deployments is the use of physical assets. Here are some of the more common reasons driving this consideration:
- Some operating systems are not virtualizable.
- Not all performance requirements can be met on a virtual server through cloud-based storage.
- Some required hardware configurations are not supported on cloud or virtual server platforms.
Regardless of the specific reason, hybrid deployments require increased attention to the data center of the cloud provider, including physical security, access restrictions, audit and certification capabilities, power and cooling capabilities, expandability and core networking operations. All these critical elements play a critical role for the enterprise and should be taken seriously.
Another important consideration is whether the cloud provider offers local smart hands, which means immediate access to industry certified engineers to install and maintain complex environments, such as hybrid cloud deployments. At Verizon Terremark, smart hands are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year round. This benefit translates into a quick response time to solve mission-critical issues. If a cloud provider lacks a smart hands offering, then the enterprise needs to carefully take into account its location and proximity to their own specialized technician to perform these complex tasks.
In addition to the data center and smart hands, security must be part of the conversation when talking about hybrid cloud deployments. Security is critical in both colocation environments as well as virtualized environments. How are these physical devices protected? How are they connected to the multi-tenant cloud platform? How is the traffic of the enterprise protected, optimized and monitored for anomalies? Where do the responsibilities of the enterprise end and the provider start?
Hybrid cloud deployments may very well be the best of both worlds. However, it’s important to fully understand who is making this promise and ensure the concerns listed above are carefully addressed.
