How to make the most of your hybrid cloud solution

With cloud computing being an effective solution for a lot of companies, many are still not completely sold on outsourcing their IT to a cloud service. That is why many switch to a hybrid cloud solution: Mixing together a private IT infrastructure with the public cloud.

That way, they feel they can control important aspects of their operations while still gaining most of the advantages associated with software as a service or platform as a service. This is especially the case with manufacturing firms, where their legacy enterprise resource planning systems may take more time than usual to upgrade. Of course, once they have the cloud in place, there are ways to develop their solution so that it better serves their business needs.

Stopping the repeats with virtualization?

One method of improving this system is through virtualization. This process creates a virtual rather than real copy of a computing component. That can include servers, storage spaces and applications, according to TechTarget. One of the issues that virtualization has the potential of resolving is the field of data replication. As Datamation notes, one of the issues of business is getting data moved from one site to another, especially between public and private settings. A hybrid cloud solution only exposes this problem a bit more, especially in situations such as data recovery. By virtualizing the private system on the cloud, a business has a back-up in place in case a disaster strikes that cripples the infrastructure.

Another situation virtualization helps is through seasonal swings in business activity. In a process called cloudbursting, public storage and bandwidth gets expanded during a surge of activity. In this circumstance, it requires a significant amount of investment in hardware and software so that activity isn’t disrupted overall. Virtualization addresses this issue by creating a virtual machine that can be placed in the cloud where a business may previously had to consider buying or renting a new server or platform to keep up with the traffic. As a result, this saves the company time and money, allowing them to divert resources elsewhere during peak demand.

Integrating old and new solutions

There are other approaches to enhancing the hybrid cloud experience. The first is to improve security measures, according to Data Center Knowledge. One of the great faults of current cloud security is that it lacks a lot of flexibility to help businesses move data around quickly, and that is greatly exacerbated when the settings are both local private systems and the cloud. Now, there are solutions in place that allow a greater degree of elasticity when it comes to providing secure data between systems. They can also utilize many of the key functions of the cloud, such as scalability, to improve the net of encrypted data in a given process.

Along with these measures, utilizing different software platforms for specific measures such as hypervisors can help improve the overall efficiency of your operation. This can include proprietary platforms or open-source systems that vary in different uses and specific structures. There is also the option of delivering hybrid platform in terms of the services used, as well as the deployment of services. These can provide a high level of flexibility that improves several business processes.

Finally, there is the matter of automation. Manufacturers are likely familiar with automation, since it is likely how they are producing the parts and materials made today. This process can be used on software and infrastructure as well. The way this can be done is controlling all points of the infrastructure or platform from a single source, anticipating traffic spikes and changes in demand to better suit the situation. This level of dynamic management can enhance the solution’s overall performance without having to commit manpower and resources.

Originally published on the Sage ERP Blog on 8/26/2014 at 9:33 am by The Sage ERP Team.