Five Things We Love About Hybrid

Cyxtera Technologies • January 18, 2022 • 4 minute read

Hybrid IT, Enterprise Bare Metal, Colocation in Business

Simplify your IT infrastructure - and save money in the process

Most of us have at some point in our lives heard the expression “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?” As a kid, your answer might have ranged from “No!” to “Maybe,” or even “Huh?” depending on the kind of kid you were and the mood you were in. Now, as an adult, you’re much more likely to issue the phrase than be on the receiving end, but maybe it’s time to turn the tables. Even adults need the occasional reminder that just because everyone else is doing something doesn’t mean you need to jump on the bandwagon.

Take cloud migration, for instance. As demand for flexible and cost-effective IT grows in an increasingly remote environment, cloud adoption is occurring at a much deeper and more distributed level. While the cloud offers a host of benefits, mass-scale cloud migration masks the fact that decentralized networks make it more difficult for enterprises to maintain control of their infrastructure, data, and workloads. Just because everyone else seems to be migrating to the cloud doesn't mean it’s right for your organization — it’s not a decision that should be made lightly or without careful planning and forethought.

The good news is that hybrid cloud offers the best of both worlds. It combines and unifies public cloud, private cloud, and on-premise infrastructure to create a single, flexible, cost-optimal IT infrastructure. Using a hybrid approach to cloud networking can help IT leaders regain control and efficiently scale their operations as they react to digital and business transformations and emerging edge technologies.

Hybrid cloud setups allow enterprises to scale infrastructure limitlessly, while making full use of their existing assets. Critical data can reside in the private cloud, where it’s secure and easily accessible, leaving IT teams free to massively scale operations when demand is high. When the constraints of a fully-owned infrastructure are removed, enterprises are able to scale, grow, and compete in a way that wasn’t possible before the hybrid cloud era.

1. Realize the best of both worlds
   Given that cloud environments are multi-tenanted, publicly accessible, and connected via public internet gateways, some enterprise IT teams may worry about potential security threats. to their corporate network and data. At the same time, it can be difficult to scale efficiently without making use of cloud technology. As a result, for businesses looking to leverage the benefits of the cloud while keeping sensitive data thoroughly protected, a hybrid cloud approach can offer the “best of both worlds.” Companies can protect their most sensitive or mission critical data within the data center, while using the public cloud for less sensitive workloads.
2. Scale Limitlessly
   Hybrid cloud setups allow enterprises to scale infrastructure limitlessly, while making full use of their existing assets. Critical data can reside in the private cloud where it’s secure and easily-accessible, leaving IT teams free to massively scale operations when demand is high. No longer shackled by the constraints of a fully-owned infrastructure, enterprises are free to innovate and grow in ways that just isn’t possible outside of a hybrid environment.
3. Maximize Performance
   A key benefit of splitting workloads between public and private clouds is greater speed — non-critical operations can be moved to the public cloud, leaving the private cloud free to efficiently process the most critical traffic. Were you to process all your workloads on the public cloud, you’d likely be competing with other enterprises for the same compute power, which can lead to issues with packet loss, higher latencies, and degraded experience for end users. Hybrid environments, on the other hand, can be completely custom-built to help users work faster and be more productive.
4. Save Money
   A hybrid cloud environment typically translates into lower costs than exclusively using either physical infrastructure or the public cloud. Lower, more predictable costs are great. Greater still are lower costs that are easy to control and forecast. And all of this without the need for large infrastructure expenditures? Priceless.
5. Increase Agility
   Implementing a hybrid approach drives enterprise agility by allowing them the scale and speed they need to respond to changes in the business environment. This makes it easier for enterprises to build and deploy new services, and empowers them to significantly decrease their time to market.

If you’re considering hybrid cloud, we hope you’ll consider Cyxtera. Cyxtera is the ideal future-proof infrastructure solution for hybrid IT. By providing direct connectivity to every major cloud provider via cross-connects in all our global data centers, we cut out the volatility of the public internet, enabling enterprises to reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and improve network performance and reliability. Plus, our best-in class colocation facilities and expert technicians enable enterprises to build consistent, future-proof infrastructure solutions to address a myriad of use cases and requirements. Reach out to one of our Sales consultants to learn more.

Views and opinions expressed in our blog posts are those of the employees who made them and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Company. A reader should not unduly rely on any statements made therein.