The "Hybrid" Buzz
You know, when Microsoft release their Hybrid cloud offering for Azure, I thought that was great, after all hybrid has become a buzz word in recent years with the hybrid electric cars and such. But as time went on I started to realize hybrid wasn't a good word for what they were offering with Azure on premise and cloud integration. I am not saying the offering isn't good, far from it, it is a great approach to transitioning the enterprise to cloud infrastructure and provides something Amazon (AWS) is sorely lacking and has been slow in adopting. Instead it is the terminology and what it means, the term hybrid is going to end up causing confusion as true cloud hybrid offerings are implemented, so let me explain.
What is a Hybrid?
Merriam-Webster.com defines "Hybrid" as
: an animal or plant that is produced from two animals or plants of different kinds
: something that is formed by combining two or more things
The second definition is true for vehicles and technology. In short it is taking two "things" and combining them. Just like the first definition, it is a single new entity from combining two similar things. In the case of hybrid cars, we took technology from one type of car, a gas (or diesel) powered engine and combined it with the electric motor from an electric car. The result is not gas and it is not electric, instead it uses both, as a single combined system. The gas motor is smaller than the original and so is the electric and they are inseparable.
Why #hybridcloud is not hybrid
Now in the definition above we talk about combining two technologies to make a single result, but in reality that doesn't happen in a hybrid cloud solution. Instead each component, cloud and on premise, remains intact and then additional functionality is added to make them appear seamless. They are not a single entity, but instead a blending of the two systems. Now blending is a good thing, it is not bad and in reality if we call it a blended environment, it will reduce confusion with actually hybrid cloud solutions. Another reason I would consider it not a hybrid is because they are different technology bases. Apples and Oranges can not be combined to form a hybrid, because they are not similar, but a Tiger and a Lion can be, creating a Liger, why because they are very similar and in the same family of animals. Cloud and On Premise share some similarities, but they are too different to be combined into a hybrid.
There is a hybrid cloud!
Hybrid cloud solutions do exist and they are going to become more and more prevalent. It is the reason why I want to differentiate now rather than later, when organization begin implementing private cloud solutions, they will still need some components to exist in the public domain (public cloud) these environments will not be intended to operate independently and will use parts from both "cloud" offerings making a hybrid environment. This is the next stage in the transition to the cloud for large enterprises as it offers the control they still desire for the control of where data resides, but abstracts the servers from the hardware.
So what about this "Blended Cloud"?
Well a blended cloud is a seamless integration of cloud computing components into your on premise environment. The two exist independently and are combined using tools like ADFS and VPN to make it seem as seamless as possible. In reality the only way you can tell the difference as a user is by the latency (time it takes to respond) you experience. This latency can be eliminated however through the use of caching devices, like StorSimple, that analyze the traffic and cache the most commonly used information on the local area network (LAN).
Conclusion
Now I know a few of you out there are saying it is still hybrid (namely my friends at Microsoft) which is fine, I just feel differentiating between them will make for less headache as time goes on. Thanks for reading, please provide your comments and feedback and follow me on Twitter @DavidRMcMillan and @DevFactoPortals.
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