When setting up a data center, there are generally three ways to establish it: it can be done totally on-premises, it can be done totally in the cloud — which some call a hosted data center — or it can be done as a mix of the two. Many see this hybrid cloud approach as optimal. Others, however, aren’t so sure. Though opinions are split, there’s little doubt this approach is having a major impact on the data center as we know it.

Having Your Data Center Cake and Eating It Too

The hybrid cloud allows businesses to control some part of data center operations while minimizing the overall expenses required to establish that data center. The huge initial expense of an on-premises data center has long been one of the biggest drawbacks of such a setup, and cloud systems have stepped in to cut costs.

A report from market research company MarketsandMarkets noted that the hybrid cloud market was poised to reach $84.67 billion in 2019, showing that there is plenty of spending in this field. Indeed, over the last few years, companies like Netflix and Zynga — both huge data users — have vacillated over whether or not to use cloud-based systems, and seem to be settling on the hybrid cloud concept to address these issues.

Is It All About Control?

A report from TechRepublic once noted that there were some serious concerns about spying to bear in mind. Though the report was from back in 2013, around the height of the Snowden affair, the notion that someone could be peeping at the contents of a company’s cloud is still reasonable. Yet even back then, the lure of maintained systems and predictable bills was hard to pass up; it was projected that over one in four of business mailboxes worldwide were in the cloud.

With such concerns in mind, it’s not out of line to think that a company would want to keep its most sensitive data close to the vest, which calls for on-premises operations. But what about lesser data? Such data could comfortably be off-loaded to cloud systems, creating less demand on the data center contained internally.

Trust, But Verify

The idea of a hybrid system makes a lot of sense. A completely on-premises system would have to be massive, and therefore expensive, not just to build but to maintain. A completely cloud-based system has predictable expenses, but all that data is in someone else’s hands, and that makes for a distinct lack of peace of mind. The hybrid data center represents an attempt to bridge the gap. Saving a little money and gaining a little control could be a plan worth following for a lot of businesses, and it’s the hybrid data center that makes it happen. To learn more about this approach, contact us today.