Extend on-premise solutions using Hybrid Cloud best practices

Use case

Challenges

Main challenges

In most situations, businesses still operate their on-premises datacenters after moving data and workloads to the cloud. With a hybrid cloud, you can combine the public cloud and on-premises data centers to create an integrated IT environment that spans both the cloud and traditional computing environments. Occasionally, companies operate the hybrid set up to extend their on-premise capabilities for a lengthy period. In other instances, they use it as a risk-controlled path to migrate their entire workloads to the cloud after some time.

Unfortunately, the hybrid cloud is prone to challenges such as lack of reliable, low latency, and secure connection between your datacenters and the cloud. Most commonly, businesses fail to extend their on-premise solutions due to difficulties faced in creating a consistent environment that offers practical and safe management and development with minimal duplication of work. Compliance issue is another common issue in running a hybrid cloud, which can eventually slow your DevOps operations and innovation.

Business/technical goals

Businesses require Hybrid Cloud Best Practices to create and optimize an integrated IT environment that spans both on-premise data centers and public cloud.

Establishing and following Hybrid Cloud Best Practices enables an enterprise to create a consistent environment in terms of security, development, and management of workloads, both in the cloud and on-premise data centres.

Approach

Using Hybrid Cloud best practices. The successful multi-cloud development and management involving public cloud and an on-premise data center is complicated. Besides, there are few tools to solve the challenges involved.

To overcome the challenges, you can extend your on-premise solutions using hybrid cloud best practices. They include:

Identify the workload being managed – You should gain a firm understanding of the data and applications that will run on the hybrid cloud.
Find the right cloud partner –Partnering with the right cloud service provider is an essential aspect of a successful hybrid cloud solution. Businesses should select a cloud partner with proven experience in implementing hybrid environments.
Automation – While developing and maintaining a hybrid cloud, actively automate IT processes such as resource provisioning, application deployment, and performance monitoring. Automating allows your workforce to focus on crucial DevOps activities such as application development and legacy software improvement without worrying about the underlying system operations.
Optimize workloads before migration –  You should customize applications before cloud migration activity.
Deploy consolidated Hybrid Cloud management tools –  Your organization can deploy hybrid cloud management tools to manage and monitor cloud resource usage and provide consistent and improved user experiences.
Actively monitoring the Hybrid Cloud – Organizations should share the responsibility of monitoring the hybrid set up, instead of trusting their cloud service providers entirely.

Situation before & after the implementation

Before

Setting a hybrid cloud may result in an unstable environment with security, management, and work duplication issues.
Most frequently, businesses adopt a hybrid cloud strategy to meet their computing needs, taking advantage of capabilities from the cloud and on-premise environment. However, if the company does not use the hybrid cloud optimally, the strategy can result in wasted time, money, and computing capacity.

After

An adequately set hybrid cloud acts as a path towards migrating the entire datacenter to the cloud.
This set-up ensures that a business is not locked into one cloud platform irrespective of its value.
Additionally, a hybrid cloud strategy allows companies to scale computing resources while eliminating the need to invest massive capital for handling short-term spikes in demand.
Fifty percent of banking executives believe the hybrid cloud can lower their cost of IT ownership, while 47% say the strategy can accelerate innovation and operating margin. Top-performing banks are 88% more likely than their underperforming peers to implement a hybrid cloud strategy.

Architecture diagram

*Sample high level design

Methodology

Immersion

Introduction with the client to understand his context - both business and technical. The aim of the phase is to explore this new context, gather the needs through exchange with the different key points of contact, answer unclear points, and agree on a defined scope.

Ideation

Proposition of several potential solutions that could fit the need and iterate on it based on client feedback. In this step, we can include a prototype or a Proof of Concept to have a better sense of the feasibility of the architecture to put in place with its different layers/components.

Implementation & tests

Iterative phase based on Agile methodologies & rituals: sprint planning, demo, retrospective, prioritization, etc. Each sprint will include the implementation of the technical architecture, the deployment of the infrastructure, and the development phase if required.

Production

Go in production with the defined solution and ensure post-production support if required.

Benefits

Deploying Hybrid Cloud best practices offers a wide array of benefits that allows you to extend on-premise solutions. Some of the benefits include:

  • Saves time and cost for your IT operations - Automating IT processes in the hybrid cloud frees resources such as cost and time. It allows your DevOps team to focus on re-architecting legacy systems and developing new ones while automation takes care of infrastructure provision, management, and monitoring.
  • Simplified and streamlined IT functions - Investing in consolidated management tools for your hybrid cloud simplifies IT operations for both your public cloud and private on-premise data centers.
  • Better accessibility and support -  selecting a partner that meets all your requirements can result in an enhanced connection that improves availability and support.
  • Improved compliance and governance -  Organizations can leverage the recommended best practices to ensure that the hybrid cloud set up follows business-related processes and compliance requirements.

Getting started with Technofy

At Technofy, we help clients extend their on-premise solutions using hybrid cloud best practices. Our team of experts understands that there are no shortcuts in hybrid cloud management and monitoring, and they leverage the best practicesfor security, design, and governance. We guide in selecting the cloud partner with proven experience in hybrid cloud implementation. We provide advanced tools and services to manage and monitor your hybrid cloud environment in real- time. Overall, Technofy ensures that your public cloud and on-premise data center have implemented proper security measures, such as encryption, to ensure your hybrid cloud workload remains safe.
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