Category Archives: Cloud

What is Hybrid Cloud and why is it good for my business?

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Hybrid Cloud – What is it?

When you hear hybrid nowadays it’s easy to picture in your head a Prius or similar vehicle that runs by a traditional gasoline engine, but also supplemented by electric motors from batteries charged by the engine, and braking of the car. While a hybrid cloud architecture is not exactly the same, it is similar in that your business technology is powered by systems that you run on multiple compute platforms.

In  its most common form, hybrid cloud simply is a combination of traditional IT infrastructure that you run in your physical facilities, combined with infrastructure that you run on a cloud platform like AWS, GCP or Azure.

Additionally hybrid cloud could be that you run infrastructure on multiple cloud providers – which is often referred to as Multi-Cloud. This type of hybrid cloud architecture affords you the unique strengths of the platforms that you chose, to best fit your business use cases.

Your business matters – should you put all your eggs in one basket?

Stuff happens. It’s unfortunate, but its a part of business that needs to be taken into consideration. Servers have hardware failures, internet connections go out, people make mistakes, and bad actors exist out there that may want to do your business harm. Your technology systems are critical to the operations of your business. Your customer facing online presence is critical yo your reputation. With so many cogs in the machine business, can you trust that one system will always work without fail, no matter the circumstance?

One of the best use cases for a hybrid cloud architecture is business continence. That is – the ability for your business to keep running in multiple potential outage scenarios. With uptime and reliability guarantees up to eleven nines, today’s cloud providers have built a resilient infrastructure to withstand the test of time, giving you the peace of mind to focus on your business goals. And with 24/7 support, fast response times, and a large community of cloud professionals sharing their knowledge, challenges can be resolved quickly and thoroughly using the cloud.

So how does it work?

While there is no one size fits all hybrid solution, there is a general set of patterns that can apply to your business needs, budget, and risk tolerance for your business. Here are some examples:

  • Redundancy – This would be simply running redundant resources that perform the same function. A simple example would be with email – running an Active Directory server and an Exchange server in the cloud, as backups of your on premises AD and Exchange servers – that can keep running and process email when your office internet connection is out. This could be an active redundancy or a cold/hot site backup. This type of architecture can get pricey depending on what you need, but can offer the lowest risk to business outages.
  • Diversification – With complex business solutions, you could run some of your systems in one cloud provider like AWS, some on another like GCP, along with systems in your own physical datacenter or business. This way if there is an outage in one place or another, you only sustain a partial outage, and business can keep running. This can be done in combination with redundancy if your risk tolerance is low.
  • Offsite Backup or Archiving -You may just want to use the cloud to back your data up in the cloud as an inexpensive way to protect your critical on-premises systems, or to move off old data for safe keeping in case of a rainy day, to free up space on your existing servers. Cloud can do this too, and if set up right, can be easily connected to cloud compute resources in a pinch, or accessed from your office for analysis, restoring data, or auditing purposes. The sky is literally the limit with what you can accomplish with the cloud.
  • Cloud Bursting – This is where you can ‘burst’ your compute needs to the cloud when under heavy load as needed to supplement your existing infrastructure. This can give you more compute power on demand for complex workloads, and you only pay for what you need while it’s running through the magic of autoscaling. Combine that with using spot instances where you can set your max bid for cost per hour to run, you can keep the costs in check or get faster systems to use for a short time, for less than full price.

We can guide you to the best solution for your business.

No matter what your business size, or risk tolerance, there is a use case for hybrid cloud for you. Often times when a business first starts to adopt cloud technology – they become hybrid cloud by default. The Cloud Pros can consult with you to implement the best scenario for your business needs. Give us a call or send us an email for more information on how we can bring your business to the next level using the power of the cloud.

Choosing the right cloud provider for your business

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Your business is ready to make the leap to move into the cloud, but you are not exactly sure where to start.

With so many choices out there and more companies offering ‘cloud’ options, you could easily be swindled into a long term contract with a provider that offers a ‘cloud’ solution that not only doesn’t fit all your business needs, but also could cost you more than you bargained for.

So how do you choose the best option?

Instead of having your decision influenced by free giveaways like pens and coffee cups, or high dollar marketing campaign magazine ads and tv commercials, you should think more about what you seek to gain from the cloud and what you plan to do from it.

  • Do you want to use cloud a little, or a lot?
  • Are you seeking a lower cost alternative to traditional infrastructure where you have to buy servers, software, redundant internet connections, uninterruptible power supply systems, HVAC, and have a full time staff to support it?
  • Are you looking to expand your existing technology by adding things like more compute, database, or analytic power?
  • Do you have multiple business locations and you want to hook them together?
  • Are you trying to meet some regulatory compliance level that would be very costly to build onsite?
  • Do you want to run everything from there and have more remote capabilities?
  • Are you a heavy user of Microsoft products like office 365, or do you go with whatever technology works best for you?
  • Maybe you want to just back up your data to the cloud, or set up backup systems so your business can operate during the next hurricane, power outage, internet outage, or other business disrupting event.

These types of questions are what you need to ask before deciding what cloud options to pick. Depending on your use case – one provide may be a better choice than another. We at The Cloud Pros can work with any system or provider, however always recommend that you go with one of ‘The big 3’ public cloud providers, over any vendor specific option so that you have not only the most choice of capabilities, but also typically the best value. Vendors like CenturyLink, Oracle, IBM and others will offer your business their options, but you will have to sign up for a contract, and can typically only work with their approved technology stack.

Choice is a good thing.

Any of the leading cloud providers offer a large enough portfolio of services and offerings for most business cases, but each has its strengths that may make it the right choice for you.

AWS

Amazon Web Service offers the largest set of options at 176 services and is the the choice of most. They are the largest provider in the world and that is due to being the most mature platform and industry leader. You can’t go wrong here from general compute to big data needs. With the largest network of regions in the market, you can host and connect your business technology all over the world for low latency and high bandwidth connectivity. Many of the largest household name technology platforms you use every day run on AWS, so you can trust your business need to them. They offer a 1 year ‘Free Tier’ that gives access to their entire gamete of compute, database SaaS and IaaS technologies, so adopting them as your provider is easy since you can try them for free. AWS Free Trial

GCP

Google Cloud platform really has made a push as of late, and under the direction of new leadership is aggressively targeting some of the most innovative and powerful technologies for transforming businesses, and thus is a leader in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Their pricing model often undercuts the other providers as well, and has a very robust ‘Always Free Tier’ of services you can use in small quantities at no cost, They offer a first year free option with up to $200 credit that you can use to try services beyond the free tier. They are also offer large incentive credits for startups to adopt their platform. It’s no wonder they are the fastest growing and that their Professional Cloud Architect certification is the highest paying certification for 2019 according to Forbes Magazine. GCP Free Trial

Azure

Microsoft Azure claims to be the 2nd largest cloud provider and has been moving towards offering more non-Microsoft and open source technologies, expanding their service offerings. Their claim to be #2 has a lot to do with Office 365 being part of their portfolio (and more than half of their user base), so naturally they can be a great choice for businesses that heavily depend on their technology stack. If you have a lot of Microsoft business platforms like SQL Server, Exchange, Windows Server 2016 Active Directory, Dynamics and the like, you may want to look at Azure. They also are excellent in the business intelligence space, plus offer incentives for existing Microsoft service subscribers. They offer a 1 year free trial and $200 credit to try them out. Azure Free Trial

Decisions, decisions…

With so many questions and so many choices, we can help you make the right choice for your business needs. We can take your requirements, make recommendations, and then build the cloud of your dreams on the platform of your choice. Contact us for a free consultation.

You may also have a business need to use more than one provider. This approach is called ‘Cloud Agnostic’ or ‘Multi-Cloud’ which is an interesting subject matter in and of itself. Check out our article about this next week.