Hybrid Cloud: Realising the Best of Both Worlds with Azure Stack

The cloud is one of the most important modern technologies for businesses to look towards. After all, the benefits of the cloud platform are unparalleled — with many businesses opting to use the cloud within their infrastructure. But, even with these benefits, a singular cloud-based solution is often not the best option for some businesses.

A hybrid cloud solution — one that utilises both on-premises and cloud-based environments, both public and private — lets you take advantage of the benefits of both cloud and on-prem systems. Azure Stack is Microsoft’s solution for facilitating a hybrid cloud solution and will help you ensure that you’re getting the most out of your cloud implementation.

In this article, we’re going to go over why your organisation needs the hybrid cloud, as well as how Azure Stack works and will help you get started with the hybrid cloud today.

The Need for Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud solution is a computing environment that combines both public and private clouds as well as on-premise systems to create a new, integrated system. This system exists to help your organisation stay agile and keep costs down, while also reaping the security benefits of the private cloud.

There are a few benefits to this —

- Reducing costs: The private cloud is more expensive than using the public cloud. But, you may have data requirements that necessitate on-prem or private cloud infrastructure. However, paying so much more for the private cloud when you don’t exactly need it everywhere will lead to higher costs. This is why the hybrid cloud saves costs — it lets you use the on-prem or private cloud private cloud infrastructure when required but also lets you take advantage of the reduced price of the public cloud.

- Flexibility and agility: On-premises servers are far less flexible than the public cloud —  especially when it comes to remote working. The hybrid cloud lets you take advantage of both the benefits of the private cloud and on-prem as well as the flexibility of the public cloud — meaning that you can keep your important data secure while also putting forward remote working.

- Business Continuity: If your business experiences downtime in your on-prem implementation, having a hybrid cloud solution will mean that you can utilise the public cloud to ensure business continuity. This means that you can easily ensure everything remains up and running in the meantime while figuring out what’s wrong with your private cloud and fixing it.

There are lots of different solutions that can facilitate the hybrid cloud. Much like in the wider cloud landscape, Microsoft Azure’s solution — Azure Stack — is the best way to facilitate the hybrid cloud in your organisation, letting you take advantage of the benefits of the hybrid cloud.

Introducing Azure Stack

Azure Stack is Microsoft’s solution to allow you to run Azure services flexibly in the environment of your choice.

From data centres to edge locations and even remote offices, Azure Stack lets you build and mobilise cloud environments that let you take advantage of and fully implement the hybrid cloud — letting you use both private and public cloud solutions as well as letting you take advantage of on-premise infrastructure.

Azure Stack essentially works by letting you run cloud services on your own servers, meaning that you can keep your data on-premises if it needs to while also allowing you to use cloud services for whatever might require the cloud. With this, you can also create applications that work both on-premises and within the cloud, making your organisation more flexible as a whole.

Azure Stack Use Cases

Azure Stack can be used in a lot of different scenarios to be able to facilitate your organisation’s infrastructure and help you take advantage of both on-premises and cloud-based benefits —

- Latency within edge and remote locations: Azure Stack can be deployed in locations where low-latency processing is necessary. These locations are known as edge locations and include manufacturing plants, retail stores, and remote offices. By taking advantage of Azure Stack’s ability to deploy within on-premises systems in these locations, you can deploy essential and high-priority applications without having to worry about latency or connectivity issues.

- Disconnected environments: In environments where you have a lack of internet access or difficulties maintaining the levels of network connectivity that are required for using the cloud, you can use on-premises systems using Azure Stack to store data locally without being dependent on cloud connectivity. This is useful for industries like defence, mining, or maritime operations where network connectivity won’t always be a given.

- Data sovereignty and compliance: Azure Stack can help organisations keep in line with compliance and regulatory requirements by letting them use on-premises hardware to keep their sensitive data protected and safe while using cloud services for other, less sensitive workloads.

- Hybrid development and testing: Using Azure Stack to be able to leverage both cloud and on-prem systems to be able to fully facilitate hybrid development and testing to be able to create and deploy hybrid applications that will work both with on-prem integration and cloud infrastructure — meaning that you can create more flexible and agile applications for your organisation.

How We Can Help

The hybrid cloud is integral to ensure that you’re taking advantage of the cloud’s full potential. By using a hybrid cloud implementation, you can ensure that you have the flexibility that comes with a public cloud service while also using on-premises systems to ensure that your most sensitive data is in your control.

Azure Stacks is Microsoft’s solution to facilitating the hybrid cloud. By using Azure Stacks, you can deploy cloud services onto on-prem systems — meaning that you have the best of both worlds.

If you’re looking to get started with Azure Stacks but don’t know where to start, reach out to us today. Our team of experts is here to help and will be able to help you get started with the ins and outs of the Azure platform.

Get in touch with us now and see how we can help.

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