Why Hybrid Multi-Cloud Has Gone Mainstream for Enterprise Storage Deployments

A hybrid multi-cloud approach to enterprise storage has become the go-to strategy for enterprises. Thankfully, IT leaders have, for the most part, figured out the business and technical value of leveraging both the data center and the public cloud. They know where they want workloads to run – and why. And they want the same experience across their private and public cloud environment.

It’s impractical to put all data into the public cloud, of course, but it’s an appealing option for certain use cases, such as backup, business continuity, disaster recovery, DevOps, and extra burst storage capacity. Meanwhile, keeping high-performance, business-critical and mission-critical workloads in the data center (with a cloud-like experience – aka your “private cloud”) proves to be more economical, more efficient, and more controlled.

Many companies execute a hybrid cloud – or hybrid multi-cloud – strategy by deploying their own private cloud integrated with one or more public cloud providers. The number one reason many enterprise size companies do a private cloud implementation is security; the number two reason is cost control; the number three reason is providing 100% application and workload availability; and the fourth reason is providing the necessary performance for demanding and highly transactional workloads. A private cloud, basically, mimics a public cloud deployment.

For many enterprises, having data sit with a third-party provider is an issue – security, compliance, regulatory, performance, etc. With a hybrid cloud, some of your data is on-premises, and some of your data is off-premises. But you own both the on-premises and off-premises part of the equation.

With a private cloud, you have better, more exact control over cost structure and service level agreements (SLAs). Essentially, you are able to match SLAs, such as application performance and availability, with a higher level of control.

By combining both worlds of private and public cloud and, therefore, having an end-to-end hybrid multi-cloud experience across on-premises and the off-premises public cloud (namely, Microsoft Azure and AWS), enterprise data infrastructures are made easier to manage, more consistent, more cost-effective, and more flexible. This applies to enterprise storage just as much as it does for various forms of enterprise computing.

The need for a hybrid multi-cloud storage solution that can deliver these benefits is an essential linchpin for unlocking the real advantages of this pragmatism to use enterprise storage arrays on-premises and in the cloud, simultaneously, for maximum value.

The storage operating system used in the arrays should support multiple public cloud providers, including the two largest public clouds globally − AWS and Azure. It’s ideal when the cloud edition of the software-defined storage is built from the exact same code as the on-premises enterprise storage solution: same functionality, same ease of use, same automation, same cyber resilience, same interfaces and seamless integration between the on-premises storage environment and the off-premises public cloud storage environment.

It should ladder up to a comprehensive framework for hybrid multi-cloud storage with seamless public cloud integration. Ultimately, the support for multiple clouds – particularly, AWS and Azure – enables enterprise organizations to manage and secure data more easily and more effectively.

Let this reality sink in: adopting a hybrid multi-cloud strategy means you obtain greater visibility across the enterprise data infrastructure, and your storage solution makes the public cloud as if it’s just another storage system similar to the enterprise arrays on-premises.

You should seek out this consistency of experience. The last thing you want to do is make the hybrid multi-cloud environment more complex. Having a comprehensive framework for hybrid multi-cloud simplifies deployments.

New Opportunities Arise with Hybrid Multi-Cloud

A hybrid multi-cloud approach, with a strong private cloud configuration, creates the opportunity to consolidate storage arrays for maximum efficiency. Why do you need 22 storage arrays when you can do the same things – or better – with only 2 arrays?

Consolidation of storage saves on operational manpower, rack space, floor space, power expense, cooling expense – CAPEX and OPEX savings, while delivering a greener data center. You can consolidate storage while, simultaneously, improving access to data across a hybrid multi-cloud and a container-native environment for greater resilience, lower latency, and higher availability.

As enterprises evolve themselves digitally, a hybrid multi-cloud strategy orchestrates all the different aspects of it in a mixed computing, storage and services environment, comprised of on-premises infrastructure, private cloud services, and a public cloud, such as Azure and AWS.

This hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure becomes the cornerstone for an organization’s ability to be agile and pragmatic.