For a few years now, we have all gotten used to using the word cloud, cloud here, cloud there, you upload it to the cloud, you pass it to me through the cloud, I have no space left in the cloud ... However, if we talk about cloud as a storage system, we have to talk about the different types of cloud that we have at our disposal.
On the one hand we find the public cloud, the cloud used by all users who store their data on external servers such as Google, Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive. On the other hand we find the private cloud, clouds that are available to a company, a company that physically manages and maintains it without depending on other companies
But in addition, we also have another type of cloud, baptized as hybrid cloud, which, as its name indicates, is a combination of both. The hybrid cloud combines the advantages of the public cloud with the private cloud, sharing data and applications.
This type of cloud is ideal for companies that suffer from time to time elevated workflows and that it is not worth investing in their own servers for such a short period of time, since the investment to be made is not exactly cheap.
What is hybrid cloud
Thanks to the hybrid cloud, companies have the storage capacity offered by the public cloud at very attractive prices without having to make significant investments to face specific peaks in demand, which require equipment and resources that some companies cannot afford in addition to the immediacy when hiring them, so it is usually a fantastic solution for small companies that are starting and that are mainly, although not exclusively, related to the internet.
In this way, companies that need more storage capacity from time to time can expand their resources quickly and easily without making significant investments that cannot be amortized in the future, through this type of platform such as Azure Microsoft, AWS from Amazon, Google Cloud y OpenStack.
These platforms offer customers a preconfigured VPN so that the data transmission between the private cloud and the public cloud is completely secure, as it is end-to-end encrypted, so that absolutely no one who can access that data during transmission (highly unlikely) will not be able to decrypt its content quickly or easily.
All these services allow the client to establish what type of data is stored in public servers, in this way the own servers can be used to store confidential data and the rest of the information in the public cloud, in this way we free up space and resources on our servers that we can use for other purposes.
How can we see the hybrid cloud offers us the best of both types of clouds.
Hybrid cloud features
Lower cost
The main advantage that we find if we use a hybrid cloud is the cost. Expanding the number of servers destined to manage and store data implies a major expense that is associated with hiring more staff for maintenance and that if it is a specific situation, it can cause significant losses in the company.
Scalability
Another advantage it offers us, especially when it comes to old servers, is both horizontal and vertical scalability, since it allows us to increase the productivity of our company exponentially as it is based on the cloud and not on physical servers, which in turn require maintenance, larger facilities ... which is associated with the previous section.
Flexibility
By allowing us to hire the space we need for a certain time, we can enter into different projects without being afraid of the initial investment That would entail increasing our physical servers, as long as they are scalable, since otherwise, we would be forced to start practically from scratch.
Security
We can configure how the hybrid cloud works so that the most sensitive data is stored in the private cloud and the rest of the data in the public cloud. Of course, the most probable thing is that the servers in the cloud that we hire have much more security than the private cloud that we can have in our company, but this option never hurts for the most suspicious and most distrustful.
Hybrid cloud usage examples
This type of cloud can be found in many sectors such as healthcare and finance thanks to the cost reduction and scalability they offer. These sectors store in the private cloud the most sensitive data such as medical and banking records of their clients while the rest of the generic information is stored in public clouds, which allows them to have a much faster network and benefit from the management of computing that They offer us.
Best hybrid cloud services
AWS (Amazon Web Services)
The cloud storage service most used in the world mainly by companies with a market share of 40%. Dropbox, Foursquare and Hootsuite are some of the companies that use this platform.
Microsoft Azure
Storage service most popular with companies It is the one that Microsoft offers us with Azure, one of the services of the computer giant that has grown the most in recent years. A good test of its performance is the recently launched xCloud, Microsoft's streaming video game service.
Google Cloud
In third position, but no less important, we find Google's storage platform, ideal for complex computing needs, a field in which Google has focused an important part of its efforts in recent years.
OpenStack
Another of the platforms that it offers us is OpenStack, a cloud computing project that is associated with free and open source software. The fact that it is free software is not associated with its being completely free. Among some of the OpenStack clients we find Huawei, Cisco, Dell, Ericsson, HP, IBM and Yahoo mainly.
If you want to know the story of how the creation of cloud computing came about and the motivations that led Amazon to create the first service aimed at all audiences (not only for companies), I invite you to take a look at this article.