How to Build a Hybrid Cloud Computing Strategy

Cloud infrastructures are a highly efficient evolution of server virtualization and the scale-out deployment model -- but companies should note this evolutionary path isn't a fit for all applications. That being said, cloud computing platforms are more than just shared, multi-tenant infrastructures on the public Internet. Three infrastructure-as-a-service cloud deployment options are available to enterprises today, each with unique characteristics and economics that can help optimize application and service deployment objectives:

1.Public clouds. These deliver the best economies of scale, but their shared infrastructure model can limit configuration, security, and SLA specificity, making them a less-than-ideal fit for services using sensitive data that is subject to compliancy or safe harbor regulations.

2.Internal clouds. These sit within your data center and behind company-built protections, but they typically have modest economies of scale due to funding limitations and tend to be less automated.

3.Hosted clouds. Hosted clouds run at a service provider on resources that are walled off with enterprise-class protections but managed as a pool. These fall between the first two options, providing more custom protections like an internal cloud but with the greater economies of scale of being a service from a cloud provider.

Enterprises should build a strategy that leverages all three options via virtual private cloud technologies, which will result in a hybrid cloud strategy that optimizes business service deployment efficiencies.

Virtual private cloud is a technique for extending your organizational trust boundaries over a series of resources regardless of their deployment. It builds off the basic concept of a virtual private network (VPN), but is a more robust networking concept that lets you define and control addressing, topology, protocols, and encrypted communications for instances deployed to cloud computing platforms.

Virtual private cloud technology defines the network security boundaries for the business service and the locations (types of deployments) where elements of these services can be placed or moved. These solutions can be enabled by two types of offerings: 1) those that focus on the network security layer; and 2) those that abstract the application tier across cloud deployment boundaries.

The evolution of cloud computing and virtual private cloud technologies add to the ever widening portfolio of infrastructure deployment options that help enterprises match the infrastructure to the needs of the application more efficiently and cost effectively than has been possible before. Here are a few tips to ensure the integration between these deployment infrastructures deliver the greatest value:

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