Today data storage and data security have become the prime objective of businesses. Ditching traditional or on-site storage, businesses are putting their trust in cloud servers and cloud computing. Cloud computing includes computing services related to servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence which are delivered via the cloud. A cloud computing infrastructure -the collection of hardware and software elements needed to enable cloud computing- always includes computing power, networking, storage, and an interface for users to access their virtualised resources.
Major Cloud Computing Services are IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and SaaS (Software as a Service), whereas Desktop as a Service (DaaS), Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS), Managed Software as a Service (MSaaS), Data Center as service (DCaaS), and Information Technology Management as a Service (ITMaaS) are the other kinds of cloud computing services. This cloud computing service is offered by cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Oracle Cloud, etc.
Today, many businesses in Australia and several countries in the world are utilising cloud storage systems to store their digital assets and confidential documents. Australia is moving towards attaining full digital transformation and hence making good use of cloud computing in almost every sector. In 2020, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) and the Digital Transformation Agency released new cloud security recommendations to assist the safe use of cloud services throughout government and business. Cloud computing is getting popular among various enterprises, so they are trying to choose the best type of cloud computing. This is generally categorised into three types: public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud. Here we will discuss why hybrid cloud computing is helpful for small businesses.
What is a hybrid cloud?
According to Google Cloud, A hybrid cloud is one in which applications run in a combination of different environments.
A hybrid cloud has a healthy mix of on-premises, private cloud and third-party, public cloud services. This involves a connection from an on-premises data centre to a public cloud. A hybrid cloud has a combination of at least 2 computing environments.
These environments can beat least 1 private cloud and at least 1 public cloud OR 2 or more private clouds OR 2 or more public clouds OR One physical hardware or the virtual environment connected to at least 1 cloud. There are several ways to deploy hybrid cloud platforms. Some hybrid cloud deployment models: Customer managed, Vendor, managed, Partner managed, and Cloud provider managed platforms are popular ones. There are different hybrid cloud architectures.
However, all hybrid cloud architectures share data integration, network connectivity, and unified management features. Businesses can make a hybrid cloud migration to enjoy the best of both worlds of public and private clouds. Further, this hybrid cloud computing allows businesses to select the components from each cloud environment that best suit particular applications within their business.
Where is the Hybrid Cloud used?
Hybrid cloud services are frequently employed in larger hospitals as this hybrid model transports patient data within or outside of healthcare facilities.
Additionally, it is employed in the processing of sales data and performance records, which is a crucial topic. The e-commerce store uses hybrid cloud services to protect consumer and sales data. But at present, small businesses are also availing the power of the hybrid cloud and paving the path for their business growth. In fact, in upcoming years, most organisations will be adopting hybrid cloud infrastructure management and eventually enlarging the hybrid cloud market size. (Source: Gartner reports).
How does the hybrid cloud work?
Hybrid cloud computing combines public and private clouds to facilitate seamless data transmission between the environments. The interconnectivity can be enjoyed by using data virtualisation. Later the connection is made with tools like APIs, VPNs, and WANs.
API- Through Application Programming Interface (API) integrations, a hybrid cloud functions by connecting databases, applications, etc.
VPN- Through a virtual private network (VPN), secure, encrypted connections over the Internet are made. Using a VPN cloud and on-premises infrastructure can connect securely over the open Internet.
WAN- A wide area network (WAN) connects computers over a distance. A WAN continues to encrypt communications with a VPN for hybrid clouds.
10 Advantages of hybrid cloud for small businesses
1. Drive Innovation and Enjoy High-quality IT services
The major drivers of innovation are Demographics, Attention, Usability, and Technology. Being a part of the latest technology, hybrid cloud computing does bring innovation and hence makes it easier for firms to build new services and eventually strengthen the organisation to efficiently meet the needs of their customers. Not just innovation but by using hybrid cloud computing, the IT infrastructure of a business will stay updated. SMEs can relish continuous business improvements by availing Internet of Things, Data and Intelligence and Intelligent Automation which are also offered by hybrid cloud services.
Some years back, hybrid cloud services were only available for large business, but now it is accessible to smaller businesses. This has certainly made way for small businesses to gain benefits from cloud services; they can relish complex, high-quality IT applications with lesser effort and comparatively low cost. The most flourishing area for small businesses using a hybrid cloud would be Customer Relationship Management. Further, with a hybrid cloud, small businesses can generate decisive competitive advantages and own an improved concentration on the core business.
2. Meet High Service Demands
A hybrid cloud helps small businesses to address their high demand for applications or services at affordable costs. They use their own data centres to achieve peak demand. These hybrid solutions are also prepared with additional computing resources, which are required to supply the necessary capacity and ensure customer satisfaction. In the high-demand context, Cloud bursting is used. Cloud bursting is an approach in which businesses can choose to host their applications on private servers, but in when it is periods of high demand, they take advantage of the public cloud.
This is extremely useful for businesses that witness regular fluctuations in their demand for data and application services. For example, apps for finances are used more during the end of each quarter, tax season, or budget announcement time. Likewise: the eCommerce and retail industry may have a normal flow of customers on regular days but can have greater volumes of traffic and sales during seasonal and festive events like Christmas. Overall making adjustments via cloud bursting, businesses can maintain happy customers and provide the best customer service even in times of high demand.
3. Make Data & Applications Available for Remote Workers
Having data and applications stored in on-premise data centres may cause lag times with your workers working remotely. You can see a significant reduction in on-site installations with cloud-hosting services. With a hybrid cloud, organisations can easily access connections with their team members and offer appropriate authorisation.
In addition, these organisations can leverage their infrastructure to provide employees with remote access to cloud-based and on-premise data and applications. Furthermore, with hybrid cloud services, organisations can avail the plethora of video conference and collaboration tools, training courses and remote support without personal contact.
4. Enhance Data Security & Protect Sensitive Data
Some businesses and organisations in specific industries are subject to data security and privacy regulations from recognised organisations. Further, various nations have developed data localisation laws. These laws require organisations to store data, typically personal customer data, in the same country where they collected their data.
To facilitate such data, hybrid cloud solutions can be the best option. Further, businesses and organisations can build data centres in each country and make efforts to protect their customers’ privacy legally. Organisations need to have their business data, i.e. IP data, which includes proprietary code, business intelligence, and financial statements. Thus, with a hybrid cloud arrangement, enterprises can minimise data exposure and even enjoy a customised and flexible IT service.
5. Improve Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity
Through its disaster recovery and backup offerings, the hybrid cloud provides customers with cross-cloud and multi-cloud disaster recovery and backup capabilities. It also ensures service continuity by keeping all crucial data secure and highly reliable. Thus, organisations today rely on the hybrid cloud as a disaster recovery solution to have smooth business continuity and prevent unanticipated downtime. Furthermore, hybrid clouds are different from environments with only single-cloud as it has limited infrastructure scalability, data bandwidth restrictions, data privacy issues, and support for backup tools.
6. Lower IT Spending & Operational Costs
A hybrid cloud offers a cost-effective way to scale your operations to cope with surges in demand and accommodate long-term growth. In layman’s terms, investing large amounts of money on expensive server equipment, desktops, and licenses, along with high setup and maintenance costs, will be heavily reduced by hybrid cloud solutions. Organisations can utilise efficiency improvements. To make it short, hybrid cloud organisations can have higher utilisation rates for IT resources, lower costs, and more efficient IT spending.
7. Increase Scalability of Operations
Operational scalability is an organisation’s system or business model to scale in response to increased demand for its goods or services. With hybrid cloud services, businesses can extend their operations to meet managerial needs or add more on-site data centres. Hybrid cloud solutions have the ability to choose when and where to deploy workloads and data, and this aids in accelerating the organisation’s IT ability and adapting to changing business requirements. Overall, a hybrid cloud gives organisations the scalability they require to expand and offer new features to their customers.
8. Get access to up-to-date Tools and Technologies
Organisations use hybrid clouds to implement cutting-edge technology to support all application workloads. A hybrid cloud environment, tools, and technologies guarantee the best performance, lowest prices, and most reliable service. Further, hybrid cloud tools help enterprises to manage all their infrastructure components in one place and even increase productivity.
9. Small businesses can avail intelligent work processes
After the COVID pandemic, flexible work—complete or remote work from home—has become common in IT and other industries. In order to enable flexible and intelligent work and make employees securely access official data and applications from anywhere, businesses are using hybrid cloud solutions. Furthermore, hybrid cloud computing will play a fundamental role in setting employees’ flexible work models at smaller businesses.
10. Hybrid cloud migration reduces carbon footprint
Cloud migration can reduce global CO2 emissions and hence become a sustainable option. As per AWS cloud platforms, migrating from a physical setup to the cloud can reduce carbon footprint by nearly 80%. With a hybrid cloud, businesses can consume 84% less power and reduce carbon emissions by 88%. In fact, many cloud vendors assist clients in tracking their own footprint. So, switching to cloud computing can be a better option for smaller businesses trying to minimise costs in the initial days.
In order to achieve maximum benefits, businesses must be clear about hybrid cloud infrastructure where cloud-based resources are combined with on-premises IT infrastructure to achieve an organisation’s IT goals to support business processes.
Why choose NSW IT Support for cloud services in Australia?
It’s high time for every existing business to make optimal use of cloud technology. If you are a small or medium-sized business looking for an affordable business transformation by using cloud migration services in Australia, then NSW IT Support is a reliable name. We are providing the best cloud services to our clients from diverse industries. We have cloud options from Office 365, Azure Managed Services, Managed Public Cloud, and Application Hosting. To know more about our business solutions, cloud service, cloud resources, hybrid cloud hosting, or anything related to cloud storage solutions, please contact us. We would love to offer our services.
