Creating the Best of Both Worlds
Perhaps the private cloud isn’t right for your business’s all-in-one solution. Perhaps your business is transitioning away from legacy software/systems that you can’t quit quite yet—but are limiting your functionality and scalability. Every business’s technology needs are unique—it may be best to invest in a tailor-made hybrid cloud infrastructure.
The cloud may still seem…well, cloudy to many people. And a hybrid cloud title does nothing to assuage those concerns and could even make things more muddled. Simply put, hybrid cloud solutions are a combination of on-premises or privately hosted, and public cloud infrastructures. The two communicate over an encrypted connection such as MPLS, ensuring the data stored or used in the private cloud is protected while adding the scalability and compute resources of the public cloud.
So, who uses the hybrid cloud model? And why is it best for them? A hybrid cloud can be an excellent choice for companies with strict compliance needs, for instance, a health care provider, or health insurer. These organizations deal with a lot of protected healthcare information (PHI). This means they must be HIPAA compliant, with strict access rules about PHI data availability and storage. These organizations usually maintain a private cloud data center for that information but may have a large number of users in the organization. This would be a good case for workstations and applications to run in a virtual environment that utilizes public cloud compute resources. These then use an encrypted link to the private cloud to share information throughout the organization.
“This results in some serious cost savings for any company, any budget.”
Another example could be organizations that experience a large spike in utilization or traffic volume during specific timeframes during a year. That may be retailers on Black Friday and during the holiday shopping season, or organizations that run standardized testing during a school year. The organization runs its private cloud but may retain public cloud resources in a cold state—available when they need the extra compute resources during these busy times. This would give an organization a boost in computing power to deal with the spike in activity.
These are just a few examples of a great utilization of hybrid cloud infrastructure. Rather than a massive capex expenditure like massively expanding a private data center, which is very tough for small businesses, organizations can use their opex to budget the public cloud resources they need, when they need it. This results in some serious cost savings for any company, any budget.
A hybrid cloud, especially when relating to HIPAA and PCI (payment card industry) data, embodies a greater approach to compliance as opposed to a public cloud. The data that needs to be secured will reside in a dedicated private environment, while conducting transactions with the power and scalability of the public environment. This also saves money in the long run, as organizations may be less susceptible to breach or failure, which may result in loss of revenue or worse.
A hybrid cloud environment also affords businesses a test environment for their applications. By using public cloud resources to test, it keeps private cloud resources free to run daily operations. This can improve time to market for new apps, sites, services, etc. and it keeps cost down by using the public cloud’s opex flexibility rather than purchasing more infrastructure that may not be used on a consistent basis.
“The cloud may still seem…well, cloudy to many people.”
But building a hybrid cloud infrastructure is no small task. Atomic Data and our experienced Architects will help construct the perfect hybrid solution for anyone. No two businesses are the same, and we customize solutions to fit a business’s needs. We get to know the ins and outs of an organization’s infrastructure with an Orange Book. This product gives us, and the Client, a full view of every technical aspect in order to recommend and construct the best solution. And more than that, the Orange Book is the beginning of a relationship between Atomic Data and the Client. We get to know each other well, and build a roadmap together for the future of the Client’s infrastructure.
Beyond discovery and architecture, is our private cloud. The Atomic Cloud®, a virtual solution hosted in our world class, SOC 3® attested data centers, built on enterprise equipment from VMware®, NetApp®, Cisco®, F5®, and Corero®. Our protections are extensive and we can fully manage services. This leaves Clients free to focus on their core business drivers. We make IT serve the needs of business, so if it sounds like your business would benefit from a custom hybrid cloud solution, contact us today.