The hybrid IT model featuring a mixture of on-premises, cloud and edge resources and services has become the dominant technology deployment strategy. According to a Flexera study, 80 percent of organizations have embraced the model in order to support increasingly diverse workloads.
The hybrid approach is appealing because it allows organizations to move applications and services to different environments based on key workload requirements such as speed, bandwidth, accessibility and security. In fact, understanding where to place different workloads is key to a successful hybrid IT environment.
Generally speaking, the cloud is ideal for workloads that require high scalability and availability, while those requiring more control and security are better kept in-house. Meanwhile, network edge deployment is ideal for workloads requiring real-time data processing and low latency. Here are some examples of workloads best suited for each environment:
Cloud
- Web applications. The ability to easily scale resources up or down as needed makes the cloud ideal for hosting web applications that experience varying levels of traffic.
- E-commerce sites. With the ability to easily handle sudden spikes in traffic during peak shopping periods, the cloud helps ensure that e-commerce sites can deliver a fast and responsive user experience.
- Big Data processing. On-demand provisioning of storage and compute resources in the cloud allows organizations to process vast amounts of data quickly. This helps them gain valuable insights, improve decision-making and drive innovation.
- Disaster recovery. The cloud’s built-in redundancy and failover capabilities create a highly reliable and resilient environment for disaster recovery.
- DevOps and testing. The ability to quickly provision and de-provision test environments in the cloud allows organizations to accelerate the software development lifecycle, improve quality and reduce time-to-market.
On-Premises
- Legacy applications. Modern cloud platforms may not support applications built to run on specific hardware or operating systems. Keeping these applications on-premises is often the more practical option.
- Business-critical applications. Enterprise resource management, customer relationship management, human resource management and other applications that drive core business processes are often better off in house to ensure security and availability.
- Confidential or proprietary workloads. On-premises deployment allows for greater control, stronger security and enhanced regulatory compliance for applications involving financial data, confidential customer information or propriety business data.
- High-performance computing. HPC workloads require significant computing power, which can be difficult to achieve with cloud-based solutions. These workloads benefit from the use of specialized hardware, such as graphics processing units that are usually easier to deploy on-premises.
- Data analytics. Many organizations choose to run analytics on-premises for security reasons. In many cases, these workloads involve sensitive information that would create security and compliance issues if leaked.
Edge
- Internet of Things. Edge computing pushes data processing closer to data sources in order to minimize latency, preserve bandwidth and allow IoT devices and sensors to work with real-time data.
- Video processing. Edge computing enables real-time analysis of video surveillance feeds, making it possible to detect threats, recognize faces and more.
- Predictive maintenance. Real-time analysis of data from sensors on machines and other assets can identify when maintenance will be needed, helping organizations reduce downtime.
- Content delivery and caching. By caching frequently accessed content at the edge, organizations can reduce the amount of traffic that needs to be sent back to centralized servers, which can help reduce latency and improve the performance of applications.
- Augmented and virtual reality. Edge data processing reduces latency and improves the performance of these applications.
A hybrid IT model can provide a great deal of operational flexibility, but organizations must determine the ideal environment for each workload based on a variety of characteristics. Download our guide to hybrid infrastructure or contact us to learn more.
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