Multi-cloud vs Hybrid cloud

On the first pass, both may appear same and these terms used interchangeably by some, but they are not the same. Here we’ve explained the differences, which are subtle but very distinct, between the two.

Hybrid cloud

Hybrid cloud is a mix of public and private cloud that connects the public cloud such as AWS to your on-premise system and is orchestrated to perform together for a single task. In this scenario, you’re optimizing your workload so it runs in the right environment at the right time. Using Hybrid cloud, organizations can access highly elastic compute resources from the chosen provider, perhaps for managing and storing additional workloads at peak times and for general day to applications. But all the mission-critical stuff remains on-premise infrastructure for multiple reasons like privacy regulations and security.

Why implement Hybrid cloud?

For certain use cases, organizations require a combination of a private and public cloud to leverage unique benefits offered by them.

Organizations can leverage cloudbusting, in which application workloads burst into the public cloud for additional compute resources after they reach a threshold level in private cloud.

It makes sense for organizations to use public cloud resources for a new, untested application before embarking on the capital expenditure associated with launching in a private cloud. Once an organization defines a steady-state workload pipeline to run an application, it may choose to bring the application to on-premise systems.

Moreover, cloud customers can use hybrid clouds to promote high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR). For example, in a Disaster recovery scenario, an organization can keep its recovery environment in a public cloud and production environment in a private cloud, ready to spin up as necessary. The organization replicates data across to the public cloud, but all other resources remain non-operational until needed.

Hybrid cloud architecture provides maximum agility for meeting the needs of the organizations by providing infrastructure where IT operations can be automated to improve the user experience.

Multi-cloud

Multi-cloud represents more than 1 cloud deployment of the same type and it can be public or private cloud, sourced from different cloud providers. Business adopt Multi-cloud to mix and match a range of public and private clouds to use best of breed applications and services.

Both Multi and Hybrid cloud approaches are not mutually exclusive: You can have both, simultaneously. In fact, Most organizations seek to improve security and performance through an expanded portfolio of environments.

Just for the info, multi-cloud architecture is different from multi tenant architecture. Former we have already discussed, later refers to software architecture in which a single instance of software runs on a server and serves multiple tenants.

Why implement Multi-cloud?

Different Multi-cloud use cases can be leveraged to offer IT teams increases flexibility and control over workloads and data.

As multi-cloud offers flexible cloud environment, organizations can meet specific workload or application requirements- both technically and commercially- by adopting it.

Organizations also see geographic advantages to using multiple cloud providers, to address app latency problems. Also, some companies may start using specific cloud providers for short time to achieve short-term goals and then stop using it.

Additionally, vendor lock-in concerns and possible cloud provider outages are two issues that pop up frequently when IT leaders advocate for multi-cloud strategy.