In today’s data-driven world, combining on-site resources of cloud systems with the hybrid cloud method has sparked a revolution in storage management. Unifying the best private and public clouds, this setup delivers three fundamental advantages—flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness—that benefit businesses of any scale.
The global landscape for hybrid cloud storage has witnessed a staggering ascent, scaling from a market value of US$ 55,678.0 Million in 2022 to a projected US$ 1,87,982 Million by 2032, marking a robust compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.9% across the forecast period. The driving forces behind this remarkable expansion are multifold.
A surge in demand for agile, cost-effective computing solutions coupled with an insatiable appetite for flexible infrastructure has propelled the ascendancy of hybrid cloud adoption. Simultaneously, the clamor for interoperability standards, harmonizing existing systems with cloud services, echoes louder in the tech arena. Fueling this enthusiasm is the relentless march of digitalization, accompanied by an extensive embrace of cloud computing services.
Gartner’s clarion call resounds—hybrid cloud integration emerges as the linchpin to weave data services across the edge seamlessly, core data centers, and public clouds. Moving beyond storage provisioning, hybrid cloud solutions metamorphose into bastions of platform services, facilitating data insights, cyber resilience, life cycle management, and data mobility across diverse deployment domains.
The data projections from Gartner paint a compelling narrative of the imminent transformation:
- By 2025, an anticipated 60% of I&O leaders will embrace at least one hybrid cloud storage use case, a threefold surge from the mere 20% witnessed in 2022.
- A paradigm shift looms on the horizon—by 2025, over 40% of enterprise storage is slated for deployment at the edge, a quantum leap from the 15% observed in 2022.
Hybrid Cloud Storage Architecture
A hybrid cloud architecture framework empowers enterprises to govern data storage locations while effectively managing surges in IT demands. Within hybrid cloud computing, a configuration known as cloud bursting facilitates the seamless transition of an application from a private cloud to a public cloud in response to spikes in computing requirements. Notably, cloud bursting offers the advantage of cost efficiency, as businesses only incur charges for additional public cloud resources when they are actively utilized. However, implementing cloud bursting necessitates considerations such as platform compatibility, latency, load balancing, and adherence to compliance and security protocols.
Advantages of Hybrid Cloud Storage
1. Cost Efficiency
Minimizing capital expenditure remains a primary driver for organizations contemplating a shift to hybrid cloud storage. The expenses of acquiring and maintaining local storage—such as servers and on-premises data centers—can be steep. Hybrid cloud storage mitigates these costs by leveraging the expansive capabilities of the hybrid cloud model, allowing companies to pay for public cloud services only when required.
2. Scalability
Hybrid cloud deployment combines the strengths of private and public clouds. Crucial data and operations can stay secure in the private cloud while tapping into the agility and potency of public cloud storage, which enables seamless scalability. Businesses can effortlessly expand their operational capacity in response to fluctuating computing demands.
3. Facilitating Innovation
Enabling enterprises to accelerate innovation, hybrid cloud storage unlocks avenues for developing new applications and running robust analytics programs that might otherwise be financially impractical for smaller companies reliant solely on on-site servers.
4. Enhanced Security
Hybrid cloud computing empowers businesses with control over their data, enhancing security measures by minimizing the exposure of critical information. Organizations can strategically determine where to house their data and workloads based on compliance, policy, and security requirements.
5. Ensuring Business Continuity
Integral to a company’s continuity strategy, hybrid cloud storage facilitates seamless data backup by duplicating critical information to the cloud. This ensures uninterrupted business operations in the face of disasters or computing failures. Additionally, these environments enable the cloud to absorb sudden workload surges, safeguarding the business from overburdening its private servers during spikes in computing demands.
5 Key Hybrid Cloud Storage Trends
Hybrid Cloud Security and Compliance Unification
The evolution toward hybrid cloud solutions has unlocked new security concerns while introducing novel risks to data and systems, often lacking the established legacy security measures of on-premises setups.
As the hybrid cloud model gains prevalence, a pressing need arises to transcend segmented security practices and harmonize security protocols across diverse cloud and on-premises environments. Organizations are actively pursuing several key solutions, including:
- Leveraging Managed Services Providers (MSPs) for Security: Collaborating with MSPs to bolster security measures.
- Establishing Zero-Trust Policies: Implementing stringent zero-trust policies and solutions for comprehensive security frameworks.
- Fusing DevOps with Network-Based Visibility: Integrating DevOps methodologies with on-premises strengths such as network-based visibility.
Arwa Kaddoura, VP of worldwide sales at HPE GreenLake Cloud Services, underscores the role of automation in unifying security practices, emphasizing the need for cohesive policies and processes spanning both on-premises and off-premises infrastructures. The shift towards hybrid governance across cloud, on-premises, and edge locations is becoming pivotal, demanding consistent security measures, financial governance, and policy coherence throughout the hybrid estate.
Furthermore, addressing security and compliance requirements sees an upsurge in industry-specific cloud solutions. IBM’s Hunter elaborates on the significance of tailored cloud infrastructures to meet the increasingly complex regulatory landscape. Like Cloud for Financial Services and Telecommunications, IBM’s offerings exemplify how cloud providers cater to industry compliance needs, aligning strategic investments in the hybrid cloud with stringent regulatory mandates.
Rethinking Cloud Migration Strategies
The initial enthusiasm surrounding cloud migration led several enterprises to swiftly transition all assets without comprehensive deliberation on cloud suitability or the optimal cloud platforms. Consequently, a noticeable trend emerges: a growing cohort of organizations opting to retain legacy systems on-premises or reversing their migration back to original on-premises locations.
According to insights from Roybal at Qumulo, this reversal in cloud migration stems from a realization that not all applications align with a cloud-native environment. Legacy applications often depend on particular storage configurations or throughput requirements, rendering the cost of refactoring for cloud migration exorbitant.
Virtana’s “State of Hybrid Cloud” survey report echoes this trend, revealing that seventy-two percent of enterprises have reversed at least one application back to on-premises infrastructure post-cloud migration. However, this ‘de-migration’ doesn’t signify an outright departure from the cloud. Instead, it entails transitioning from public to private clouds or migrating between public cloud providers that better accommodate specific application requisites. This nuanced approach caters to the application’s intricacies, ensuring optimal performance and cost-effectiveness within the cloud environment.
This trend underscores a strategic shift in cloud adoption strategies, emphasizing a more discerning evaluation of application compatibility and cloud suitability. Organizations are recalibrating their migration approaches, navigating a hybrid landscape that harmonizes on-premises legacy systems with judiciously selected cloud environments to balance agility, cost-efficiency, and application performance.
Rise of Cloud-Native Applications
Amidst a landscape witnessing significant investments in modern cloud-native applications, major corporations channel resources into empowering developers to harness cloud infrastructure. This initiative typically begins with small-scale projects to construct contemporary applications utilizing public cloud infrastructure.
Ratan Tipirneni, President and CEO of Tigera, emphasizes a crucial aspect. As these applications burgeon, the necessity emerges for seamless access to resources housed on-premises, such as databases and legacy applications. However, the presence of confidential or sensitive information within these databases dissuades enterprises from migrating them to the cloud, necessitating a hybrid cloud architecture.
The confluence of cloud-native applications with on-premises resources underscores the indispensability of a hybrid approach. This architectural paradigm facilitates the symbiotic coexistence of modern, cloud-driven applications alongside critical legacy systems, ensuring secure data access and utilization while preserving confidentiality and compliance mandates.
As organizations increasingly pivot towards cloud-native frameworks, the hybrid cloud stands tall as the linchpin, enabling the amalgamation of modern cloud applications with on-premises resources fostering a cohesive ecosystem conducive to innovation and security.
Cloud Retooling
The digital transformation is shifting from a mere buzzword to an unavoidable business necessity. IT managers swiftly migrated workloads to the cloud in this modernization race, revealing unforeseen complexities. The hurried cloud migration led to disjointed strategies within IT departments and across internal business units. IT leaders grappled with managing the cloud’s intricacies, diverting attention from optimization efforts.
Businesses operate within an intricate landscape characterized by distributed environments featuring multi-cloud and hybrid cloud structures. The pressing concern revolves around harnessing the cloud as a catalyst for innovation.
“In 2022, IT leaders began reassessing their cloud approach, aiming to retool their strategies to architect, construct, and fine-tune distributed, hybrid, and multi-cloud setups for enhanced resilience, adaptability, and cost efficiency,” mentioned Samta Bansal, Global Consulting Strategy Leader at Hitachi Vantara.
Hybrid Cloud Adaptation: Vendor Strategies Evolve
Vendors have pivoted from a singular focus on public cloud migration, recognizing the growing demand for hybrid configurations that retain specific workloads on-premises.
For instance, Microsoft’s Azure Stack HCI facilitates the operation of Windows and Linux virtual machines (VMs) within the data center or at edge locations using familiar tools, established processes, and existing skill sets.
Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI, currently in public preview, empowers users to deploy AVD session hosts onto their on-premises Azure Stack HCI infrastructure. Furthermore, it facilitates the management of session hosts through the Azure portal using AVD for Azure Stack HCI.
Vadim Vladimirskiy, Co-founder and CEO of Nerdio highlights the necessity for organizations to maintain on-premises or private cloud desktops and infrastructure due to compliance, security concerns, or contractual obligations leading to vendor lock-in.
This emerging solution brings forth manifold advantages. It enhances the performance of Azure Virtual Desktop users in regions with limited connectivity to the Azure public cloud by providing closer session hosts. It ensures compliance with data locality requirements by retaining user and application data on-premises. Additionally, it streamlines access to legacy on-premises applications and data sources by consolidating virtual desktops and apps within the same location. Further, it aims to reduce costs and augment user experience by integrating Windows 10 and Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session virtual desktops, as indicated by Vladimirskiy.
Key Use Cases of Hybrid Cloud Storage
Hybrid cloud storage presents many potential applications, catering to diverse business needs and operational scenarios. Some of the primary use cases include:
- Data Archiving: Organizations often transfer aging or archival data to a cloud-based storage tier, ensuring better protection or reduced storage costs for this less frequently accessed information.
- Capacity Enhancement/Burst Capacity: Leveraging public cloud storage supplements on-premises storage, enhancing overall capacity and providing scalability during surges in storage requirements.
- Data Versioning: Cloud storage facilitates immutable data storage, fortifying defenses against ransomware attacks or preserving multiple versions of files for retrieval as needed.
- Workload Migration: Seamless migration of workloads, especially those associated with containers, to the most optimal location based on cost-effectiveness and performance demands.
- Data Migration: Hybrid cloud setups empower organizations to position data near the workloads utilizing it, ensuring efficient access and optimized performance.
Future Outlook
the future of hybrid cloud storage appears poised for continued growth and evolution. One prominent aspect is refining hybrid governance models to ensure seamless integration and unified management across diverse cloud and on-premises landscapes. As data expands in volume and complexity, the focus will be on enhancing security measures, perhaps through innovative encryption techniques or advanced identity management solutions. Additionally, the emergence of specialized hybrid cloud solutions tailored to specific industries or niche requirements is expected to gain traction, catering to unique compliance needs and fostering greater trust among businesses operating within highly regulated sectors.
