Hybrid and Multi Cloud Environments — What’s the Best Strategy?

Both “hybrid cloud” and “multi cloud” refer to cloud models that use more than one cloud. The two differ, however, in terms of their infrastructure.

A hybrid cloud combines two or more different types of cloud, while a multi cloud integrates different clouds of the same type. To put things into context: A hybrid cloud is like combining oranges and lemons, while a multi cloud is like combining different types of oranges.

Let’s look at the two clouds in more detail and discuss why companies might choose one model over another.

What do we mean by multi cloud?

Multi cloud refers to the combination and integration of multiple public clouds. For example, a company may use a public cloud provider like AWS as a database, Microsoft Azure for PaaS, and Google Cloud for its user authentication.

Many companies fall into a multi-cloud deployment model by accident; for example, when different departments use different public cloud vendors for different functions. This may be because they see one cloud vendor as excelling in a particular area — for example, SaaS — and another excelling in a different area.

What is a hybrid cloud?

In the case of a hybrid cloud, a company uses its own private cloud infrastructure — e.g., its data centre— to work in conjunction with one or more public cloud services. Hybrid cloud networks are common, with some companies migrating partly to the cloud, but finding it’s more cost-effective to keep some processes in-house — leaving, for example, their data storage, in legacy, on-premises infrastructure.

Hybrid clouds can give businesses more control, while taking advantage of the larger resources and low overhead costs of public cloud computing.

Which type of cloud deployment should companies use?

Finding the best cloud deployment generally comes down to a number of factors:

• Cost: Public clouds generally involve lower overheads and less direct management, with a cloud vendor managing the data centre, provisioning the servers, and carrying out security updates. This takes away the burden of time and cost and is a factor for many companies when they’re deciding whether they want to be in a fully public cloud-based environment, or a multi-cloud one. It also takes time to move all operations fully to the cloud and costs money, and this may keep some companies temporarily in a hybrid cloud environment.
• Security: Companies that are highly regulated, for example those in healthcare or financial services, may choose a hybrid cloud model, which allows them to keep some of their data in a private cloud. This requires a big investment in cybersecurity, however. For most companies data may be more secure in the public cloud, given that cloud vendors have lots of resources at their disposal for protecting data compared to individual companies.
• Reliability: Hybrid cloud apps might use on-premises data centres when they’re running code in an on-premises private cloud and turn to the public cloud when demand increases i.e. when their in-house capabilities hardware can no longer cope. This approach can help keep systems running when usage is high.
• Vendor lock in: Many organisations choose a multi-cloud approach to obtain the best (or most cost-effective package) of each provider's services, as well as stop themselves from being locked in to any one provider.
• Performance: Public clouds that can host servers at the network edge can help companies boost performance by reducing latency.

When adopting a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud strategy, companies need to consider how best to divide their resources. They also need to ensure they have qualified staff to run those resources in various environments, both in the public cloud and on-site.

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