Published: January 22, 2024
Contributors: Stephanie Susnjara, Ian Smalley
Hybrid cloud management (HCM) is the oversight and management of an organization's IT infrastructure and services across on-premises, private cloud, public cloud and edge settings.
Hybrid cloud management combines software solutions to create a unified management platform for designing, deploying and managing computing resources. This flexible solution combines automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies to centralize control and visibility, creating a single pane of glass that optimizes cost, performance, compliance and security across all environments.
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Hybrid cloud architecture integrates the resources and services from a mix of on-premises, private cloud and public cloud infrastructure. This environment orchestrates automated workloads to share data quickly and securely across the best cloud-based environment based on business needs and use cases.
Modern enterprise organizations rely on a hybrid cloud computing environment because it offers greater flexibility, scalability and cost optimization than traditional on-premises infrastructure setups. According to the IBM Transformation Index: State of Cloud, more than 77% of business and IT professionals have adopted a hybrid cloud approach.
A hybrid cloud environment consists of three essential components:
On-premises (also referred to as “on-prem”) is a traditional form of computing that involves an organization running and managing computing resources, networking, storage and software on hardware and servers at its own physical location, such as in an office building or at an on-premises data center.
Private cloud is a cloud computing environment where all resources are isolated and operated exclusively for one customer. Private cloud combines many benefits of cloud computing with the security and control of on-premises IT infrastructure.
Public cloud is a form of cloud computing where a multi-tenant cloud service provider (CSP)—e.g., Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Services, IBM Cloud or Microsoft Azure—hosts public cloud resources like individual virtual machines (VM) and public cloud services over the public internet.
Cloud-based services and management tools include the following:
- Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is for on-demand access to cloud-hosted physical and virtual servers, storage, and networking comprising the backend IT infrastructure for running applications and workloads in the cloud.
- Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is for on-demand access to a complete, ready-to-use, cloud-hosted platform for developing, running, maintaining and managing applications.
- Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for on-demand access to ready-to-use, cloud-hosted application software for end-users (e.g., Slack, Shopify)
A hybrid cloud environment also includes strong networking capabilities to support data transfer across environments. This connectivity typically occurs using a wide area network (WAN), a virtual private network (VPN) and application programming interfaces (APIs).
A hybrid cloud model for enterprise business is usually integrated with multicloud—which refers to cloud computing services from more than one cloud provider. A multicloud approach allows organizations to choose services from several cloud vendors, preventing the possibility of becoming overly dependent on a single provider. With a hybrid multicloud, businesses avoid vendor lock-in, thus optimizing flexibility and cost control.
A hybrid multicloud environment is critical for supporting microservices (or microservices architecture), an approach to cloud-native software development where software comprises small independent services that communicate over application programming interfaces (APIs). Unlike a traditional monolithic approach, microservices allow DevOps and other development teams to address individual services as separate entities, simplifying development, testing and cloud deployment.
Microservices are deployed in containers—lightweight packages of software comprised only of the application code and virtualized operating system dependencies needed to run in any environment. A container orchestration platform—usually Docker Swarm or Kubernetes—then automates that deployment across cloud environments.
A hybrid multicloud management approach has become the standard IT infrastructure model for enterprise business, with more than 97% of enterprises operating on more than one cloud and most organizations running ten or more clouds.
As organizations continue to build out hybrid multicloud cloud IT models, adopting multiple cloud platforms has created increasingly complex issues for enterprises in every industry. Complex challenges include the following:
Hybrid cloud implementation involves shifting sensitive data and moving workloads from across different environments, which expands the security attack surface and creates data exposure possibilities. Cloud misconfigurations—errors or glitches in the configuration of cloud resources and assets—pose a particular threat as they can create security gaps and heighten the risk of cyberattacks and data breaches.
With so many different moving parts, it becomes difficult for teams to monitor and observe operations across a hybrid multicloud cloud estate. Not only is it hard to predict security threats, but data can become siloed and fragmented, making it difficult to garner data-driven insights that drive business value. Without visibility, cloud sprawl—an organization's unintentional lack of control over its cloud computing resources—can lead to inefficiencies and unnecessary costs.
Hybrid cloud adoption involves managing multiple cloud bills. Despite the standard pay-per-use model associated with CSPs, where cloud charges based on metrics like the number of gigabytes of data used, hybrid cloud costs can become unwieldy due to cloud usage and billing complexity from multiple CSPs and other third-party vendors.
With workloads running on different hardware resources across all environments, organizations need an all-encompassing way to manage workloads wherever they reside. The value derived from a full hybrid, multicloud platform technology and operating model at scale is 2.5 times the value derived from a single-platform, single-cloud-vendor approach, increasing the need for hybrid cloud management solutions.
Such solutions help organizations do the following:
Hybrid cloud management streamlines the management of data, servers and application lifecycles across environments. This includes edge locations, reducing latency and improving user experience by bringing data processing power closer to the end user.
Hybrid cloud management allows businesses to scale resources (e.g., networking, processing power, data storage capacity, etc.) up or down based on business demands.
Hybrid cloud management is built around observability functions to automate monitoring and visibility into distributed enterprise applications for faster, automated problem-solving and resolution.
Hybrid cloud management supports application modernization, which improves software delivery performance by updating—rather than replacing—existing legacy workloads and breaking monolithic applications into microservices. Leading organizations like Amazon, Netflix, Uber and Etsy have used microservices to gain a competitive edge with more innovative features and faster updates for better customer experiences.
Before considering the technology-based tools involved in creating a unified hybrid cloud management platform, business entities must create a hybrid cloud management strategy. While each hybrid cloud management strategy looks different based on individual business goals, organizations should begin with a few fundamental steps:
- Establish clear policies, roles and responsibilities for team members across the hybrid cloud ecosystem.
- Identify workloads and determine where to locate them, whether in a private or public cloud setting. For instance, a financial services company may use a private cloud to store sensitive customer data and a public cloud for testing new mobile apps for customer service. Consider which workloads can be updated with cloud-native, microservices-based technologies to improve overall performance.
- Review cloud SLAs (service level agreements)—specifically their conditions and guarantees concerning system uptime, latency and data availability. In a complex hybrid multicloud cloud setting, misaligned SLAs can negatively impact deal pricing, quality of service delivery and customer experience, so it is essential to read all terms carefully.
- Create a holistic zero-trust approach to security management from the top down to achieve end-to-end consistency. Ultimately, data security is the data owner's responsibility, which means organizations must ensure consistent security, compliance and regulation strategies across on-premises, private cloud and public cloud settings.
A unified hybrid cloud platform can incorporate a multitude of proprietary or open-source software management tools. While each organization’s hybrid cloud environment is unique, here are some of the most common management software solutions.
A hybrid cloud management platform refers to a suite of integrated software solutions that streamline the management and automation of workloads across on-premises and cloud environments.
Such platforms are based on a unified dashboard (i.e., single pane of glass) to help organizations better understand all aspects of their business—from sales patterns to budget spending to security issues. Such platforms help administrators and development teams monitor and manage the entire IT environment, including employee devices, servers, networking equipment, edge locations and other IT infrastructure components.
Hybrid cloud management platforms increasingly leverage AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities to automate resource provisioning, deploy applications, manage security, optimize performance and provide data-driven insights.
Orchestration tools like Kubernetes allow IT teams to automate workflows, freeing them to focus on other tasks. Hybrid cloud automation also supports cloud bursting, which enables organizations to monitor when application demand and computing capacity spike within a private cloud. When demand hits a set threshold, workload traffic is redirected to a public cloud on demand. Moving workloads to a public cloud helps free up resources for critical applications within the private cloud.
A hybrid cloud management solution supports a zero-trust security approach, using a centralized dashboard to monitor all activity across all environments, creating visibility for stakeholders to monitor, identify and respond to potential security threats. Components of security solutions include:
- Identity and access management (IAM) capabilities to verify users.
- Security information and event management (SIEM) solutions tools for real-time monitoring and analysis of security events.
- Data protection tools that include end-to-end encryption for data in transit and at rest.
- Virtual private networks (VPNs) that secure data in transit by creating a secure tunnel between devices or networks over the internet.
Cloud cost management software helps organizations monitor cloud resources to avoid over-provisioning, reduce SaaS expenses and maximize return on investment. Such tools automate the efficient use of computing, cloud storage and network resources to save overall cloud-related costs.
Business and regulatory requirements are constantly evolving. Hybrid cloud software tools can automate compliance updates and alerts to help businesses stay on top of ever-evolving rules and regulations.
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