More and more organizations are moving to the cloud. The all-or-nothing approach toward the public cloud and private cloud is no more. The flexibility of the hybrid cloud has overtaken it. Deploying a hybrid cloud model in your organization helps improve productivity and business impact.
Is the hybrid cloud the future?
Adopting a hybrid cloud can be challenging for larger enterprises. This is down to the security challenges they have to deal with and their complex IT architecture. However, the hybrid cloud is bound to become a revolution for enterprises across the entire spectrum of industries. This is because of its agility, flexibility, and efficiency. At the apex of this revolution are hybrid cloud vendors.
Here are some of the top hybrid cloud vendors. Let’s see how they’re helping shape the future of the enterprise.
1. Microsoft
Microsoft has been offering a hybrid cloud solution for a while now. Microsoft System Center, Windows Server, and Azure are the products that have driven the company’s foray into the hybrid future. Microsoft has already proven itself as an excellent on-premise vendor, and its reputation as a public cloud vendor is soaring.
The company has made hybrid technologies a core part of the Azure offering. With its new product Azure Arc, Microsoft is pushing the envelope of what the cloud means.
Microsoft wants to turn any server, whether running on the cloud or on-premises, into just another resource. This makes Azure an even more compelling option for hybrid cloud deployments. It allows enterprises to bring Azure services and management to any infrastructure, including Google Cloud and AWS.
Microsoft is undoubtedly one of the hybrid cloud vendors to watch.
2. Amazon
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is, without a doubt, a juggernaut of the public cloud. Its customer base is unmatched, and it has a rich set of tools and features. Businesses know AWS for its public cloud offering. Until recently, it didn’t have all the components required for full-fledged private cloud implementation.
Amazon recently announced AWS Outposts. This is an on-premises cloud platform that allows enterprises to create a hybrid cloud solution through AWS. The package includes an AWS-designed, fully assembled, and maintained server rack. Outposts will give enterprises access to the infrastructure, hardware, and tools that AWS uses. Outposts integrates seamlessly with AWS and makes it possible for users to deploy a hybrid cloud solution.
3. Google
Google primarily competes with Microsoft Azure and AWS with its Google Cloud platform. But the two players are well ahead of Google in the public cloud business. Google has relied on its many partnerships to help with its foray into the hybrid cloud. AWS and Google share most of their partners.
So, what’s Google planning for the hybrid future?
Google recently announced Anthos, an enterprise hybrid and multi-cloud platform. Anthos is Google’s answer to the challenges many enterprises face when trying to adopt a hybrid cloud architecture. It’s a software solution that’s available on both Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and the Google Cloud Platform. Anthos lets you build, manage, and run hybrid cloud apps on on-premises and public cloud deployments. It also offers a way to shift workloads from third-party clouds, such as Azure and AWS. You don’t have to worry about vendor lock-in.
4. VMWare
VMware is still relatively new to the cloud space. However, the company has a lot of experience with virtualization and taking a vendor-agnostic approach. These are enough ingredients to make it a fierce competitor in the hybrid cloud space.
Enterprises are familiar with VMware because of its private cloud products. It works with partners to deliver a hybrid cloud solution. vSphere is the portion of VMware’s hybrid solution that powers the private cloud. vCloud Air is the portion that covers the public cloud.
5. Rackspace
This is one of the hybrid cloud vendors that work with a host of partners to deliver its hybrid solution. Rackspace’s focus is on infrastructure. The company offers dedicated database and application servers, as well as dedicated firewalls.
Rackspace delivers the hybrid promise with Rackconnect. It allows enterprises to connect their on-premises servers to the cloud. Rackspace is not as feature-rich as its competition, however.
6. CloudBolt
You don’t have to fall into the vertically integrated single vendor box where an extension of your cloud provider’s software is running in your data center. Do you want to be truly vendor-agnostic? Then, you could always deploy the hybrid cloud with a third-party cloud management platform.
CloudBolt provides an overlay on public and private clouds. If you have a pre-existing hybrid setup, then CloudBolt can help you accelerate your hybrid cloud strategy. You can deploy the CMP in minutes, and it will help unify and automate the provisioning of your hybrid resources. Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Management Platforms feted CloudBolt under the Challengers category for its provisioning and orchestration handling. The company is one of the hybrid cloud vendors you should consider to secure your hybrid future.