Have you come to the realization that public cloud alone isn’t going to work for you?
It’s happening at more and more companies. So they’re pursuing hybrid cloud migration. And as they do so, they’re realizing they need to figure out how to move some of their workloads off public clouds — and how to operate them across multiple environments.
Good news: Keeping or moving some of your infrastructure on-premises in a hybrid cloud doesn’t mean you have to go back to the days of racking and stacking. Colocation providers can easily and cost-effectively lift this burden for you. And bringing your data back on-premises doesn’t mean you have to return to legacy products, operational tools and the old ways of doing things.
Hybrid cloud provides a better way to get the benefits of the public cloud without all of the risks. And many of today’s managed service providers can capably manage infrastructure using modern, open source tools, alleviating the problems of doing it yourself.
As such, there are four clear-cut benefits of hybrid cloud:
- predictable, low costs;
- a secure, controlled environment of your choice;
- activating your data and optimizing compute workload placement; and
- avoiding lock-in.
Pros and Cons of Public Cloud
Public cloud usage among global enterprises has grown considerably the past few years. The amount of enterprise IT spending on public cloud computing will increase by 20.7% this year to a total of $591.8 billion, according to Gartner.
It’s not hard to understand why. The cloud makes it easier to deploy software and scale to meet demand without the burden of operating it, while allowing you to convert capital expenses into more manageable operating expenses.
Embracing an agile infrastructure is a good thing, but when that infrastructure isn’t under your direct purview, there can be some serious drawbacks as well:
- Lock-in: If your cloud provider doesn’t offer the specific configuration you need for a specific workload, you may be out of luck. And cloud-specific APIs mean you’ll have to do a lot of work re-architecting your applications if you move them.
- Multi-tenancy: Although you can provision dedicated instances, to truly take advantage of cloud scalability, you want to utilize instances that you can quickly and easily replicate. These instances typically share hardware with other companies’ instances, which can all compete for the same resources, hurting your performance.
- Regulations: Companies across all industries must comply with various regulations that govern how and where they store their data. On top of that, certain laws may force cloud providers to share your data without your consent. The CLOUD Act, for example, allows a foreign government, through reciprocal agreements with the United States, to gain access to your cloud-based data. And they don’t even have to tell you about it.
Benefits of Hybrid Cloud
Through a hybrid cloud migration, you can capitalize on public cloud’s benefits without taking on all the risks of public cloud infrastructure. Your engineers, developers and administrators still interact with the infrastructure in the same agile way — with APIs, without having to worry about the underlying hardware — regardless of whether it lives in the public cloud or on-premises.
1. Predictable, Low Costs
The root cause of high public cloud costs, even at modest scale, is often the cost of storing the data itself, followed by the accompanying computing services. Platina Systems slashes your total cost of ownership (TCO) for object storage by over 60% compared to the public cloud — and by even larger margins vs. legacy storage appliances. Platina takes mature open-source software and integrates best operational practices so that you and your team can implement scalable solutions faster, easier and with less effort — all while lowering your TCO.
When companies first move to the public cloud, they’re often excited about the shift from CapEx to OpEx. The resulting cost reduction may seem significant, but it’s often short lived as companies receive surprising bills that exceed their budgets. There are many hidden costs within the public cloud, such as data egress and API charges that make it almost impossible to predict your costs accurately.
Did you know that public cloud providers charge little to nothing to get your data into their clouds, but they charge an arm and a leg to get it out? Or even to move across regions? Do you know how many API calls will be made to access, modify or delete data in a month? Did you know that if you update data or change a filename, you could be charged twice for that data for the length of your contracted retention period? It takes a lot of effort for your team to understand and optimize this, which is why cloud cost overrun surprises are the norm.
But when workloads and data are on-premises, you know all the costs. And that provides the opportunity for much more accurate cost optimization. In a hybrid cloud scenario, you can still gain the benefits of cloud agility, too. Public cloud excels at providing elastic capacity and remains a terrific choice for overflow scenarios such as cloud-bursting. Meanwhile, your baseline infrastructure sits in a cost-optimized environment.
2. Regaining Control
Having your data in your cloud means that you have complete control over your infrastructure. You choose the data center and the hardware, and you define the related implementation details and policies. Because it’s your hardware, you can use whatever resources you need: specialized GPUs, DPUs, IPUs and more. And although it’s a tradeoff between control and convenience, a hybrid cloud migration also helps you optimize your costs.
3. Activating Data and Optimizing Workload Placement
Where are your applications deployed? Where is your data stored? When you employ a public cloud provider, the answers to those questions are regional distinctions: West, East, South. And it probably doesn’t make sense to be moving data all over the place to be processed — especially if there are large volumes for analytics, artificial intelligence or machine learning.
Quick access to data and compute resources can have a meaningful impact on the user experience and even productivity. One of the most important benefits of hybrid cloud is that you can deploy your resources where they are really needed and make your data instantly accessible for active use by your analytics and insights teams.
4. Avoiding Lock-In
Traditional on-premises storage offers privacy and control over your data, but it is notoriously proprietary, from its hardware and software to the APIs and management tools. Public cloud providers also use their APIs and management tools, as well as cost-prohibitive charges, to keep you locked in.
After a hybrid cloud migration you can archive, store and access your data in the way that makes the most sense for you. Platina helps free you with an implementation widely based on open source software and your hardware of choice.
Evaluating the Benefits of Hybrid Cloud
Cloud agility doesn’t have to come at such a high cost. With a hybrid cloud, you’ll gain significantly more control and make infrastructure costs more predictable.
If you’re using the public cloud today, you may want to consider a hybrid cloud migration. The best part? You don’t have to go it alone.
In the public cloud, the cloud providers take care of the management of all infrastructure and services, but at a high cost in both dollars and loss of control. Platina can help you offload those operational tasks, freeing you up to maximize the value of your stored data in a simplified, rapid and repeatable deployment.
See how we can help you reap all the benefits of hybrid cloud without all the work of managing on-premises infrastructure — so you can focus on making your business successful. Request a demo today.
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