What is distributed hybrid architecture?

A critical part of cloud computing evolution, distributed hybrid cloud extends the traditional hybrid cloud model by providing the agility, flexibility and security needed to handle complex distributed environments and accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) adoption.

In recent years, data-intensive applications have exploded, along with the need to process information in near real-time at the edge. Distributed hybrid infrastructure integrates disparate systems into a reliable and secure system so businesses can continually adapt, innovate and keep pace with rapidly changing technologies.

According to a report from 360iresearch, the DHI market size was estimated at USD 5.60 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach USD 9.95 billion by 2032.¹

While distributed hybrid infrastructure and distributed cloud might sound similar, they are not the same technologies.

A distributed cloud is a public cloud service where one cloud vendor delivers infrastructure across multiple locations. For example, the cloud service provider’s data centers, third-party data centers and on-premises. Also, it manages it all from a single control plane.

Distributed hybrid infrastructure consists of solutions that span on-premises, multicloud and edge computing settings, creating a unified management layer for consistent operation, security and workload portability. This approach simplifies IT operations for modern containerized apps.

Distributed hybrid infrastructure (DHI) consists of a unified technology stack based on cloud-native capabilities for application development and deployment. It extends cloud-based principles across an entire hybrid environment.

These are some of the key components:

• Virtualization
• Containerization
• Container orchestration
• Microservices
• Unified management platform

Virtualization, which uses a software layer called a hypervisor to abstract computer hardware into multiple virtual machines (VMs), is foundational to cloud computing.

Each VM runs its own operating system (OS) and acts like a separate physical computer, sharing the same underlying hardware. It distributes resources (for example, processes, memory, networks, storage) that are traditionally tied to computer hardware across many different locations, which sets the stage for DHI.

Built on top of virtualization, containers are executable units of software that package application code along with its libraries and dependencies. They are a natural evolution from VMs, allowing code to run in any computing environment and creating a layer of portability and speed for modern applications.

Kubernetes, an open source container orchestration platform, schedules and automates the deployment, management and scaling of containerized applications, ensuring they run smoothly regardless of where they are deployed.

Microservices architecture is a design pattern in which a single application is composed of many loosely coupled and independently deployable smaller components or services that communicate with APIs and message brokers. These services are portable and can be deployed anywhere, making them an important part of DHI.

Streaming services like Netflix and HBO use hundreds of microservices to perform tasks ranging from user authentication and content recommendations to video streaming and billing.

A unified management platform provides a single pane of glass for IT teams to deploy, manage and optimize mission-critical workloads across all environments. Its features include orchestration, automation, monitoring and governance tools that streamline workflows and track the overall health and performance of distributed infrastructure and applications.

Distributed hybrid infrastructure (DHI) helps businesses modernize their IT systems and meet their business objectives. Benefits include:

• Flexibility and scalability: As in hybrid cloud environments, flexibility and scalability form the foundational benefits of distributed hybrid architecture. These features support portability, rapid provisioning and scaling up or down based on demand. Organizations can also successfully carry out cloud migration strategies (for example, lift-and-shift, refactoring).
• Greater performance: Organizations can deploy workloads to their most optimal location, improving performance. For instance, sensitive data can be deployed to an on-premises data center, while data that needs processing in real time (for example, IoT sensor data) can be processed at the edge for low latency. Enterprises can also improve performance by breaking monolithic apps into microservices and containerizing them.
• Disaster recovery and business continuity (DRBC): DHI spreads data across multiple geographic locations and cloud infrastructure elements, supporting redundancy and load balancing. This ensures high availability (HA) and delivers near-zero downtime, providing BCDR in the face of disruptions (for example, power outages, cybersecurity attacks).
• Robust security and compliance: DHI helps organizations meet strict regulatory, sovereignty and compliance requirements through end-to-end security measures. It emphasizes continuous monitoring (for example, SIEM, IAM), along with compliance and data residency management through unified visibility.
• Multicloud integration: Distributed hybrid infrastructure enables seamless integration across multiple cloud types, including public, private, sovereign and dedicated clouds. This reduces vendor lock-in and allows businesses to choose the best solutions to run each workload.  
• Improved cost-efficiency: With a DHI approach, enterprises can optimize their spending allocation across data centers, colocations, public and private clouds. Pay-per-use creates more cost-saving opportunities.
• Optimized for AI and gen AI workloads: The intensive machine learning (ML) and large language model (LLM) training needed to power today’s AI and gen AI workloads can take place on powerful cloud-based servers in a DHI environment. Real-time data processing and low-latency inference occur at the edge, and GPU/compute resources can scale dynamically across environments.

A Gartner Magic Quadrant report on distributed hybrid infrastructure (DHI) revealed a major shift from “cloud-first” to “hybrid-first” strategies, with 90% of organizations expected to adopt hybrid approaches by 2027.²

As businesses modernize their IT strategies, leaders are evolving beyond public cloud strategies and are focused on bringing a cloud-native operating model to non-cloud locations. In response, DHI solutions have emerged to provide the advanced technologies and deployment flexibility needed to meet this demand.

DHI solutions fall into three main categories:

• Cloud platforms
• Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI)
• XaaS (anything as a service)

Cloud providers (for example, hyperscalers like Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud) provide the hybrid cloud connectivity between on-premises data centers and cloud environments. They also enable distributed cloud services across multiple geographic regions and availability zones.

Features include unified management tools like centralized dashboards, policy enforcement and workload orchestration.

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a software-defined data center approach to infrastructure that uses virtualization to combine compute, networking and storage components into a single system managed by a software layer.

To support DHI, these platforms can be deployed at multiple sites, providing consistent infrastructure across systems. Major HCI solutions include Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP), IBM Fusion HCI and VMware vSAN.

XaaS (anything as a service) solutions broadly encompass on-demand cloud services, such as SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (platform as a service) and IaaS (infrastructure as a service), CaaS (containers as a service) and more.

This model promotes the agility, reliability and security needed in DHI. It enables businesses to deliver the latest AI and other innovations on a flexible, pay-as-you-go basis. Popular XaaS solutions include IBM® Power® Virtual Server and Red Hat® OpenShift®.

Distributed hybrid infrastructure (DHI) offers major benefits across business sectors. The use cases presented further ahead demonstrate how DHI is transforming infrastructure in key industries:

• Financial services
• Healthcare
• Retail
• Transportation and logistics