How Hybrid Cloud Services Support Digital Transformation

As the world turns the corner on the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses are figuring out how they should position themselves in a hybrid world. For many of these businesses, taking on the digital transformation they deferred pre-pandemic could be the competitive advantage they need to get out in front of the competition. Beginning that transformation process with a hybrid cloud deployment is an excellent first step that ISVs, IT service providers and many other businesses should consider.

Hybrid cloud helps you work the way you want, only better

A hybrid cloud is a combination of private network services and public cloud services. The private services can be a private cloud, on-premises infrastructure, or a combination of both.

The phrase ‘hybrid cloud’ usually refers to using a single set of management tools to administer all of those resources as a unified environment. Typically, but not always, businesses will start with on-premises or other private infrastructure and then add on public cloud resources to expand different capabilities.

The concept of a hybrid cloud has been around for a while. And while it looked like the COVID-19 pandemic might dampen interest in this type of digital transformation, that was not the case. The global hybrid cloud market is still expected to grow from $50.1 billion in 2020 to nearly $185.8 billion by 2028, a compound annual growth rate of 17.8 percent.

Four use cases for hybrid cloud services

Hybrid environments are so flexible that this could never be an exhaustive list, but some of the most common use cases for hybrid clouds include:

1. On-demand data center expansion: A company might need to accommodate unexpected spikes in traffic. Or they might have specific data they must secure on-site but not have all the resources they need on-site to work with that data.

For example, a company might need to maintain a local data center to manage a large volume of regulated data. But it also wants access to public cloud resources to handle short bursts of computational work when their customers need it. For them, a hybrid cloud environment provides the right mix of security and power.

2. Safe development environments: It often makes sense to shift testing and development to the cloud. Instead of procuring new on-premises resources, your dev team can quickly spin up test machines in the cloud to work out any issues they might have with new software. When they’re done testing, they simply turn off those virtual machines and scale back storage.

3. Temporary migration space: Organizations making the transition to an entirely cloud-based infrastructure can use a hybrid cloud setup as a temporary stable environment while they resolve complex migration issues. They can shift resources piece-by-piece up to the public cloud portion of their environment without the need for disruptive cutovers or lengthy outages.

4. Disaster recovery: For companies that require maximum uptime, a hybrid cloud environment might be the easiest way to maintain a hot backup. In this use case, they keep their critical services running on-premise and deploy a mirrored environment in the cloud for disaster recovery.

If local services are interrupted, they use a load balancer to route to servers hosted in the cloud. Once they resolve the local issue, they simply cut new traffic back and return the cloud environment to its role as a backup.

Why hybrid cloud is a great choice for MSPs, ISVs and other businesses

Independent software vendors (ISVs), managed service providers (MSPs) and other tech professionals can benefit from moving to a hybrid cloud environment in a number of ways.

1. Better customer experience: Putting your service in the cloud is a great way to ensure that every customer has a positive experience. Even if you’re a small ISV, your customers’ data will be protected by the enterprise-grade security offered by your public cloud partner. You get consistent management tools that allow you to administer every customer in the same way.

Are all of your existing customers currently on a small, on-premises production server? Is taking on a new customer going to require a large amount of new computing resources? No problem, just spin them up on a new production VM in your hybrid cloud.

2. Expanded market: Shifting to a hybrid cloud strategy allows you to deliver your service globally, and do it consistently and efficiently. A cloud environment’s ability to quickly scale up or down will enable you to handle the influx in traffic from entirely new regions without compromising performance for your existing users.

Hybrid cloud services can meet any customer’s needs

The future of software delivery—and really, business as a whole—is in the cloud. ISVs, IT service providers and other channel businesses need to adopt a cloud-based model to ensure they stay competitive in the coming years. Starting with a hybrid cloud environment is an excellent first step.

Let’s be clear: Cloud computing is not a magical solution to every business problem. But it is an incredibly flexible and powerful tool that can solve a whole range of different technical and operational issues. An experienced cloud partner can help ensure your business makes the most of its investment! Join Sherweb’s partner program today or reach out to us to learn more about how hybrid cloud services can benefit your organization.

This guest blog is courtesy of Sherweb. Read more Sherweb guest blogs here. Regularly contributed guest blogs are part of ChannelE2E’s sponsorship program.