The Hybrid Cloud

With this option, the company keeps some technology and services internal and hosts other services with a Cloud provider, generally a public Cloud provider to keep the costs down.

An example of Hybrid Cloud is outsourcing the email system (Microsoft Exchange for example) to a Cloud Provider and keeping everything else internally. On the positive side, this creates all the Cloud advantages for the app(s) put into the Cloud, reduces total cost of ownership, and creates a decent ROI, for the Cloud apps. Negatively, all the apps left internally experience the same problems found in a Private Cloud setup.

The Hybrid Cloud May Be Right For You If:

• You need to leverage specific systems in a secure environment
• You have some applications or hardware that are not ready for the cloud
• Plans are to migrate to a complete cloud solution as existing hardware expires

Here Are Some Things To Think About:

• How often do you use your applications?
• Do you need them available when not at your office?
• What applications are you interested in moving to the cloud?
• Service Level Requirements
• Any Regulatory or Compliance Issues?

The Private Cloud

This is a system a company hosts internally from its own data centers or rents from an outside hosting company, through the use of an isolated, dedicated infrastructure. The advantages of the Private Cloud are it uses a business’s internal assets, provides greater physical control, and offers a sense of security. The disadvantages are that this is the most expensive option, requiring a company to hire internal or external specialists to manage, fix, upgrade, and maintain it. If disaster recovery and business continuity are desired it is necessary to invest in two separate locations, doubling your investment. Security should be managed full-time. While this method can provide a sense of being secure, it usually is a false sense of security. The problem is the security for these systems is typically only a single firewall appliance, some intrusion detection and prevention appliance or software added-on to the firewall itself.

The Private Cloud May Be Right For You If:

• Stringent security and regulatory requirements limit your ability to use shared resources
• As an enterprise-sized company, your computing budget is not limited
• Business and networking demands are predictable