What Is Hybrid Cloud Storage?

As the name implies, hybrid cloud storage combines storage in the cloud with storage that’s not in the cloud — that is, on-premises in a data center. In a true hybrid environment, data is managed as a common whole regardless of the location or medium on which data is stored (such as conventional spinning discs, solid-state flash media or even tape drives). In a hybrid environment, organizations can store their data wherever it makes the most sense operationally and economically at any given time. And it can be moved anywhere else whenever it makes sense to do so. To deploy hybrid cloud storage with capabilities that deliver value into the future, IT teams also require an intelligent storage management solution.

“Everybody wants storage that is cheaper, faster and more scalable,” says Steven Hill, senior storage analyst at 451 Research. “But the key to achieving those goals is intelligence — the intelligence to use the right storage resource at the right time for the right reason.”

This unified approach to storage represents a significant contrast to the way organizations typically handle storage. At most enterprises, various silos of storage have emerged over time. Core workloads such as enterprise resource management data may reside on one disk array. Documents — including those created in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint — may reside on another storage device. Graphics files may be kept on still another device. Finance and legal personnel may upload data and documents to a secure private cloud for safekeeping, while sales data is maintained in a public cloud environment managed by a Software as a Service partner.

This fragmented approach to data storage is economically inefficient, because it limits economies of scale and forces IT staff to perform redundant tasks for each silo. The fragmentation of storage can also be dangerous, because it increases the odds that a staff member will fail to apply a critical security, compliance or backup policy to one of the silos.

These pain points and others are driving IT leaders to adopt a unified hybrid model for their data storage, especially as they face the prospect of having to store more data and get smarter about how they use and protect it.

Rising ROI 

Hybrid cloud storage pays off in many ways as data volume, variety, velocity and uses keep growing:

Superior storage economics: By aggregating storage, hybrid cloud environments improve economies of scale. Hybrid cloud also enables IT managers to continuously migrate data to the least expensive appropriate storage option — which in many cases is a cloud-based service. “At most companies, 80 percent of data is inactive,” notes Bob Fine, director of product marketing at Dell. “So it doesn’t make sense to leave that data on high-performance media that has relatively high total cost of ownership.”

Unified management of all storage components also drives down day-to-day operational costs, since it enables IT staff to operate much more efficiently.

Flexible scalability: The cloud enables organizations to avoid spending large chunks of their capital budgets on storage infrastructure and eliminates the need to guess exactly how much capacity they will require at any point in the future. “Most companies would much rather opt for storage as they need it,” explains Deni Connor, founding analyst at SSG-NOW. “Plus, most smaller companies don’t have IT pros in-house who can spend a lot of time planning and strategizing about their long-term storage needs.”

Automated, policy-based management: Effective hybrid cloud storage uses management intelligence to automatically migrate less utilized data to less expensive infrastructure. This automation does more than save on raw storage costs; it also enables an IT team to greatly increase the size and diversity of its storage environment without having to increase staff head count. “Every organization needs multiple tiers of storage that fulfill its varying requirements for performance, cost and availability,” says Hill. “The question is: How do you make sure you’re putting the right data on the right tier at the right time?”

Enhanced business continuity: Many IT organizations still rely on numerous separate backup mechanisms to ensure business continuity. In the event of a disaster, their ability to recover data depends on these mechanisms. This fragmented approach to business continuity slows the time needed to recover and increases the risk of failure. Hybrid cloud environments can be engineered to more efficiently and reliably ensure that all essential business data is replicated to the cloud, where it can quickly be accessed for business continuity.

More trustworthy compliance and governance: Because intelligently automated hybrid cloud storage enables IT staff to define and reliably automate data storage policies, it greatly eases compliance with regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. Automated policies also help enterprises to ensure that they don’t retain certain types of content to the point where retention becomes a drawback. “Anyone who’s ever been involved in legal discovery can tell you that you don’t want to retain unnecessary data for too long,” says Hill.