The proliferation of cloud technologies is particularly confusing to businesses new to cloud adoption, and they're sometimes baffled by the distinction between multi-cloud and hybrid cloud.
Although the public cloud infrastructure and public cloud services can be similar among public cloud vendors, public clouds are not directly interchangeable or interoperable.
Adopting a multi-cloud strategy enables a business to engage the unique capabilities of different cloud providers simultaneously rather than facing an undesirable tradeoff of one cloud versus another.
It's worth noting that many multi-cloud tools may be used in hybrid cloud environments where the private cloud portion of a hybrid cloud is simply treated as just another cloud to be managed.
A hybrid cloud may employ vendor-specific tools included with vendor-based hybrid clouds, such as tools included with AWS Outposts or Google Cloud Anthos.
A hybrid cloud technology strategy merges a private cloud, on-premises infrastructure or both with a public cloud environment to create a single cloud computing environment that combines the best characteristics of local and cloud enterprise computing.
The company can also connect that private cloud to a public cloud to gain extra resources or use specialized services unique to the public cloud provider.
These are sometimes referred to as heterogeneous hybrid clouds because the resulting hybrid cloud infrastructure includes technologies and platforms from a variety of providers.
These are sometimes called homogeneous hybrid clouds because the resulting hybrid infrastructure incorporates technologies from a single public cloud provider.
Merging these public and private clouds into a consistent hybrid cloud enables easy migration of workloads and data as cost benefits allow.
Enterprises implementing a private cloud can benefit from a cloud computing environment, preserve direct control over the actual computing infrastructure and data resources in-house, and draw upon public cloud resources as desired.
Building a hybrid cloud from scratch, especially a cobbled-together heterogeneous hybrid cloud, can be technically challenging and time-consuming.
While hybrid clouds can benefit overall cost management, it's still expensive to keep and maintain additional private cloud infrastructure, as well as develop new workflows and guidelines for private and hybrid cloud use.
The whole point of a hybrid cloud is to integrate a private and public cloud, but in reality, that's one of the biggest challenges.
The hybrid cloud may require upkeep with changes and updates to match updates to the public cloud provider's infrastructure or software stack.
Hybrid clouds always involve public and private clouds, whereas multi-clouds involve only public clouds - IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Hybrid clouds connect a private and public cloud to establish a single ubiquitous environment, including management, while multi-clouds don't rely on such interoperability, even though some level of interoperability can be achieved.
A business can build a private cloud for internal use, merge that private cloud with a public cloud to create a hybrid cloud, and add or integrate multiple other clouds - whether IaaS, PaaS or SaaS - to deliver specific resources or services to the business.
A business could create a hybrid cloud with one public cloud provider but also consume the resources and services of other public clouds outside of the hybrid cloud environment.
Building a private cloud for those internal cloud transformations and blending the private cloud with a public cloud for its scope and extended service offerings might be an ideal solution.
A business might opt for VM and storage instances from one public cloud provider; business applications, such as productivity or finance, from various SaaS providers; and perhaps AI and ML cloud services or language cloud services from other cloud providers.
This Cyber News was published on www.techtarget.com. Publication date: Tue, 12 Dec 2023 17:13:05 +0000