For many IT professionals and businesses, hybrid cloud storage has become an essential part of digital transformation. It enables critical workloads to be run from anywhere by mixing on-premise, private, and public cloud environments.
Indeed, hybrid cloud technology was born from the need to support and integrate computing and storage services in different IT environments. The idea is to boost both capacity and overall performance, by taking advantage of cloud-native object storage while intelligently delivering data to the edge where it can be quickly accessed.
To use the very worn analogy that data is ‘fuel’, when it comes to hybrid cloud storage, it offers a clear visual of the benefits. Your AI systems and tools need lots of data to run, but you don’t take your car to five different locations for petrol. A truly global business, will have data coming from different sources and locations, which is where the centralized nature of hybrid cloud storage provides a unique advantage.
The benefits of hybrid cloud storage
Data is growing at approximately 40% year-on-year, according to the Frost & Sullivan white paper, The New Imperative: Future-proof your business with hybrid cloud storage. This feeds directly into the demand for AI and machine learning, with the white paper noting that 71% of companies consider it crucial for achieving their business goals.
The argument here is that our data is working harder than ever before. It’s being used in increasingly data-dependent systems and file storage isn’t keeping pace as it’s typically fragmented and redundant deployment style is not built to handle edge computing, AI deployments, or similar applications.
A big appeal for on-prem storage solutions is their scalability, though for traditional storage scaling up refers to the addition of more physical servers and usually involves migrating data and managing load across multiple siloed systems. What’s more, file data storage offerings from leading public cloud providers have limitations, such as volume size, which puts a cap on growth, welcomes more data silos, and also increases storage costs over time.
For digital transformation, data needs to be securely accessible to any employee and any endpoint regardless of their location. That access also needs to retain low latency and high performance, without adding administrative burdens such as extra migration fees or the creation of further silos.
In a real-world example, hybrid cloud storage has offered an agile and adaptable solution for business data in the manufacturing industry, which has become fraught with supply chain disruptions. Supply chain shocks that last up to two months happen every 3.7 years, according to McKinsey, with companies expecting to lose up to 42% of their earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) every ten years.
As Andres Rodriguez, founder and CTO at Nasuni, says in the white paper File Data Services to Support Modern Manufacturing: “Regardless of niche or market, manufacturing firms don’t exist in isolation – they’re always part of a supply chain and will rely on other companies to ensure that goods and services reach their destinations.”
However, with hybrid cloud, these relationships are made stronger with the free flow of data. For example, access to the same data and quality control information can speed up resolutions, reduce down time, and, ultimately, increase the efficiency of the supply chain.
A similar approach has been taken across architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC), according to the report Bringing Order to the File Management Chaos Plaguing AEC Firms. It argues that cloud-based file management is more cost-effective than on-prem hardware, as it leads to a more streamlined process for maintenance and a reduction in the need for external support.
The report suggests that by removing long-standing operational pain points, AEC businesses – and others – can spend less time fretting over file management and instead focus on getting more of their client's work done.
Why you should choose hybrid cloud storage
With a hybrid cloud storage strategy, businesses gain more control over spending and find lower costs as a result. The incremental costs of adding and maintaining local storage, like servers and new on-premises data centers, can be very expensive. Instead, money is spent more conservatively across public and private clouds thanks to more flexible payment options. One such option is moving from a CapEx model to an OpEx one, which allows IT departments to reduce expenses by using the expansive power of the hybrid cloud models only when they need it. What’s more, companies can cut their reliance on other provider’s backup and recover data services as hybrid cloud storage usually comes with built-in security. With this, budgets are not geared so heavily towards upgrading and maintaining physical hardware or expanding data center space.
Maintaining critical functions in an emergency is also a big benefit for hybrid cloud environments. Continuity planning includes disaster recovery and the restoration of data access and IT infrastructure after an outage. A hybrid cloud storage architecture accelerates disaster recovery because every file change and volume update is stored separately as an immutable copy. It’s a built-in redundancy plan, essentially, as it makes restoration of a single file, an entire volume or region a simple matter. In some cases, organizations using hybrid cloud storage have been able to restore over a million files in under a minute.
Another way to look at business continuity is a way to turn challenges into opportunities; As McKinsey notes, companies that have embedded resilience deep into their structure and strategy are more likely to pivot successfully in times of uncertainty. They also possess the tools to ensure a smooth and efficient operation, while the ‘always-on’ business model is enhanced with built-in data protection and fast ransomware recovery.
The next big milestone in digital transformation is ‘Industry 5.0’, according to McKinsey. However, it’s critical to have the right infrastructure in place to ensure that businesses are capable of fully realizing the potential of both Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0, while remaining competitive in highly volatile environments. McKinsey states that cloud storage is key to ensuring that data is secured, operationally accessible, and integrated across multiple systems and platforms.
A native, cloud-based infrastructure that can infinitely scale and make data quickly accessible anywhere, at any time, is a proven route to robust business continuity and stability, no matter what disruption comes along.
