Most of us have heard of “Private cloud” & “Public cloud” architecture, what defines them and distinguishes one from the other But things get confusing & trickier when you start talking about “hybrid cloud” and “multi-cloud”.

• How do these architectures differ from “private cloud”  and “public cloud architecture?
• How do a hybrid and multi-cloud approaches differ from each other?

 

Addressing the operational and technical challenges of hybrid and /or multi-cloud strategies.

 

This is what I want to emphasize in this blog

Recent research & surveys indicate that hybrid cloud adoption is on the rise, and at the same time there are also reports that suggest that the number of companies that have a multi-cloud architecture is growing. And of course, it’s expected that both architectures will find their way into enterprises sooner or later. But deciphering just how well enterprises understand the differences between hybrid cloud and multi-cloud isn’t clear cut. 

So, let’s start with the basics. A hybrid cloud architecture combines two or more public or private cloud environments, where the different clouds are separate, yet connected.  (Note: the interconnection between the different clouds is the Key). This means an enterprise can run some workloads in the private cloud, others in the public cloud, pull resources from either, and use the clouds interchangeably. 

 Multi-Cloud consists of multiple cloud services–public or private–from multiple cloud vendors that are not interconnected (Note: The lack of any kind of interconnection between the   various clouds is the key)

 In some cases, enterprises ended up with multi-cloud architectures because different business units sought out cloud services to tackle their specific needs, creating disconnected,   multiple cloud services. That’s a challenging situation, but cloud management and automation tools can deliver greater visibility and oversight across these disparate resources. 

Not all multi-cloud architectures are the result of shadow IT. More and more, enterprises are actively pursuing multi-cloud strategies for increased flexibility. With a multi-cloud strategy, for example, an organization can choose cloud services from several providers in order to meet specific workload or application requirements.

Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud each have their advantages. Because a hybrid cloud strategy involves just one rather than multiple cloud services, it can be easier to achieve integrated networking, centralized access management and unified monitoring and management. 

1.1-multi and hybrid cloud 

A multi-cloud, on the other hand, means enterprises can pursue best-of-breed tactics to create cloud environments to suit their specific business needs, and can also lower risks associated with relying on just one provider by providing an available, highly-scalable backup in case the primary cloud goes dark. And a multi-cloud approach offers flexibility. 

To reduce poor response times for cloud users thousands of miles away from a company’s headquarters, some workloads could be hosted by regional cloud providers that operate closer to where the users are. This solution can also help the enterprise to maintain a high availability and adhere to laws and regulations that require companies take particular care of personal information that may be subject to data sovereignty —that subjects data to the regulations of the country in which that data is located instead of the country of origin.

As enterprises expand their adoption of cloud architectures, it’s likely that we’ll start to see a mix of both hybrid and multi-cloud–let’s call it the “hybrid multi-cloud”. This is where open cloud technologies are important. 

When an enterprise’s cloud strategy consists of public, private, hybrid and multi, a consistent foundation is necessary, and one needs to rely on mature open source technologies capable to deliver that consistency. The best strategy here is to leverage tools and platforms that harp around "microservices" architecture and container orchestration to give the customer he required “scale” and “ability” to write and run applications that support native clouds and are fine-grained and agnostic to a particular hosting/runtime environment.