The Rise of Hybrid Cloud Management

If you’re currently using Cloud services, there’s a very good chance that you’ve heard of terms like Hybrid Cloud. Hybrid Cloud has become a mainstream part of organisations, across different industries.

Let’s take it one step further. Say you use a Hybrid Cloud — how do you manage this sort of cloud computing and get the best results for your business? That’s where Hybrid Cloud management comes into play — it’s a concept that is currently on the rise, as the days go by.

What is a Hybrid Cloud?

Hybrid Cloud is a combination of an internal, on-premises Private Cloud and third-party cloud services i.e. Public Cloud. A secure flow of data is allowed between these servers via an encrypted connection. Workloads move from your private to the public cloud, as the business needs change. Private Clouds offer an increased level of security and dedicated resources while Public Cloud offers high efficiency. This system allows your business more flexibility and greater data deployment options.

Establishing a Hybrid Cloud requires a public cloud infrastructure like AWS or Google Cloud Platform and constructing your own private cloud (either on your company’s premises or through a hosted cloud provider). Finally, to help these environments work in tandem, there is a need for adequate WAN connectivity. However, once this is set up, you need to manage and maintain this new cloud computing environment. This brings us to the second concept we introduced — Hybrid Cloud management.

What is Hybrid Cloud Management?

Hybrid Cloud management can be simply summed up as your company’s process of controlling the multiple cloud infrastructure deployments. This is carried out by implementing a dedicated third-party software that creates a single management platform that orchestrates the infrastructure of different cloud service vendors. With this platform, administrators can overlook and manage both private and public cloud assets.

This is essentially known as a “single pane of glass”. Managing the Hybrid Cloud environment is complex, seeing as both private and public clouds come with their own native APIs and resources. Furthermore, platforms manage their networks, storage, security and provisioning differently. You’d either have to learn all the native interfaces for both public and private or build a single pane of glass that will deal with these differences, translate what’s important and provide the administrator with information from the diverse clouds under management.

The Rise of Hybrid Cloud management

For an SMB, choosing a pure private cloud or public cloud solution may work. However, if you’re looking to grow or if you handle sensitive information, you need to opt for a Hybrid Cloud solution. Maintaining different cloud infrastructures can be time-consuming and a hassle. Therefore, a centralised management process, which bridges them, is vital.

Although conversations about Hybrid Clouds have existed for quite some time, the concept really gained steam in 2017–2018. Prior to that, companies had embraced public cloud computing environments with fervour, and as a result, they adopted multiple clouds along with a diverse range of tools and technologies. For e.g., if they needed to use Google machine learning services, then they needed to embrace the Google cloud. Each new technology meant adopting another public cloud into its portfolio. And that’s where companies have confronted the challenges of Hybrid Cloud management — managing these diverse cloud environments efficiently.

What does the future look like for Hybrid Cloud Management?

The future looks exciting for Hybrid Cloud management — many enterprises are looking at unifying their cross-cloud management. According to markets and markets, the Hybrid Cloud market is estimated to grow from USD 44.60 billion (2016) to USD 97.64 billion (2023). The main factors that will drive this growth are companies need for scalable cost-effective solutions, the current in-operability between cloud services and existing systems, and a growing number of digital solutions and applications. The potential to grow looks incredible.

With that said, the industry is still growing, and with maturity comes challenges. Some of these are:

1. Standardization: As companies continue to adopt a new target cloud, there needs to be a standardisation of the management of these diverse clouds. The need for standardization will affect everything from procurement, deployment, compliance, governance, service optimization and security. A lack of standardization could result in confusion in vendor selection, rollout and other functions. The industry will need to collectively come together to create a set of guidelines, to prevent a situation like this.
2. Encroaching vendors: Cloud vendors have picked up on opportunities in this industry. However, sometimes it can go too far. In order to make cross-cloud management easier, they are adding more features, which often have little value but cause more market confusion. Vendors will have to curb this tendency of adding features simply for the sake of increasing capabilities. The goal must always be to add value through these new features.
3. Individual and Internal Solutions: Some companies have chosen to invest in internal solutions to solve their Hybrid Cloud management challenges. This can potentially slow down the process of standardization. The cloud industry must work together to find solutions and guidelines that are simple, standardised and that support the needs to a diverse range of organisations.
4. Cost: Hybrid Cloud services are not cheap and managing them is even heavy on the pocket. However, it might prove to be cost-efficient when the cost of running operations on Hybrid Cloud are compared with running things on a Private Cloud alone. For example, an organization handling sensitive data of its users on the company website might experience high traffic and surge at certain times during the year. This might affect the speed of the website. In these cases, the company can set up a private cloud and leverage the advantages of public clouds by availing services of a good Cloud Hosting provider.
5. A growing industry will have its share of problems, but the future of Hybrid Cloud Management looks strong and will help uncover the full, disruptive potential of the cloud.