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back to article Hybrid cloud: Deciding the right mix for your workloads

Anyone who's read much of what I write for The Reg will know that I'm a believer in hybrid cloud – using the cloud for some elements of your world whilst retaining components on-premises too. But precisely which elements? We'll look at how you might decide what belongs where: on-premises, in the private cloud, or in the public …

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  1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "To me an on-premise system is one that sits ... in secure data centre to which your office has suitably fast connectivity"

    I'd have thought that a better minimum definition of on-premise is that if the connectivity goes down you can see the digger that did it. Or the cleaner who pulled out the plug.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      "To me an on-premise system is one that sits ... in secure data centre to which your office has suitably fast connectivity"

      And I would have thought that an on-premise system meant exactly that - one on the company's premises, NOT in SOME OTHER LOCATION that if OFF-PREMISE

      0 0 Reply
  2. Ragarath

    Email not so no-brainer

    Email's an obvious one (let someone like Microsoft look after it rather than giving me a pile of loud kit and temperamental software, thanks very much)

    Email is interesting, especially if your in the camp with the below statement of yours.

    The other category of system I'd put in the private cloud is systems whose security you really care about. If you're doing highly confidential legal work for a client, the chances are that you feel a lot safer with it in your secure data centre than in a cloud installation.

    Internal email that is confidential should never touch outside servers in my opinion. And this can go for every size business that has email that should remain confidential.

    Apart from that I agree with your view and it is similar to how I implement things here.

    4 0 Reply
  3. RegGuy1 Silver badge

    You're very trusting

    There are some apps that I do find tend to gravitate to the cloud. Email's an obvious one (let someone like Microsoft look after it rather than giving me a pile of loud kit and temperamental software, thanks very much), as is web hosting (a decent ISP's hosting centre probably has better DDoS protection than I can achieve on my much thinner Internet connection).

    Hmm. Is it wise to let Microsoft see your emails? If the word Linux pops up often, you may get someone snooping in your mail file.

    I like the use of the word probably. If it's not explicitly stated they can provide DDoS protection (and why would you want to put that in a contract -- that's asking for trouble) then assume they can't protect you.

    The company I work for has no qualms about pulling out the contract when people start jumping up and down, talking about money.

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    1. phuzz Silver badge
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      Gimp

      Re: You're very trusting

      Actually Microsoft seem to be quite a good choice for email storage, they did go up against the US government in order to keep customer emails in Ireland private.

      Of course, being Microsoft, if one division is doing good, there must be another division somewhere trying to redress the balance.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: You're very trusting

      I can pretty much guarantee Microsoft have better DDoS protection than 99% of businesses, unless they themselves are front-ended by someone else.

      Even a low grade DDoS will take out most business connections.

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  4. weevil

    Hardly any mention of Security here. Virtualised platforms are extremely culpable to abuse. I can phish a VM admin, dump the memory on the hypervisor and get all the data. Obviously virtualisation is a great technology, but there are many many platforms I'd much rather have physical for.

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    1. Alistair
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      Coat

      @weevil

      One can phish an SA and dump the memory on a physical.

      0 0 Reply
  5. Marc 25

    Yeah, we're not convinced that Azure, Office 364, Failsforce and 123reg (web unhosting) are the right solutions for us thanks.

    Seriously, when these boys can offer services that are always online, don't lose the data, secure and aren't extortionately priced then maybe we'll consider them. The only barrier then will be the obscene costs for internet connectivity/bandwidth charges here in the UK.

    Us Brits don't "need educating" we just ain't drinking the kool aid before it becomes a financially viable and we're sure our data is going to be safe/available/where we left it/unfondled

    3 0 Reply
  6. Sixtysix
    FAIL

    Casually arrogant, and wrong...

    Don't get me wrong, I would like to move my org to "cloud", but articles like this make things harder, not easier. See full disclosure below

    You can say what you like, but on premises definately includes in my own building. Always will. And not just if you are "...a big company that can afford suitably protected premises, mean servers and storage...". Many smaller companies do not have a business requirement for the levels of service and uptime that a commercial DC offers. Please remember that making a business case against this is, at present, impossible for an organisation similar to mine. And that is discounting the requirements for fast and reliable access to data: wire speed lines are hideously expensive, unavailable away from urban sprawl (no real bandwidth/low latency connections commercially available, let along affordable at over 80% of our offices) and at least 4 additional layers of single point of failure further away from my endusers. Given the upstream connectivity SLA levels (not even 4 nines - and they've not hit 2 nines so far this calendar year) that is a risk I cannot accept.

    The Public / Private apologetic is equally flawed, for similar reasons: that may be the definitions you'd like to see us working to, but in the real world, well, get real.

    This piece feels like an "infomercial/advertorial" targetted at non-IT decision makers in huge organisations by a sales person for a coud provider, rather than something the average IT Joe can use (aka articles by Mr Potts). Not up to the quality I expect on El Reg.

    Added to my "ignore all from" list.

    Full disclosure: I run infrastructure for several organisations (small and SME, public sector, from 40 to 700 staff, 2 to 43 offices), and provide some support several others. I've have already moved one of the small orgs fully to the cloud... because it made financial sense, but the larger org that employs me won't be going anytime soon: Information Management policy (not IS reponsibility), local data processing (GIS - BIG data in its volume meaning) and cloud storage/data movement costs (70TB rising 12% annually) and connectivity restrictions (DIRE speeds, poor delivery against SLA) all mean that commercial cloud solutions are not financially viable. For example: today we evaluated quotes for off-site cloud backup for video storage (5TB, rising to 12TB over 3 years), £350pcm, or using commercial servers in existing buildings, £4000 capital and elecricity costs (connectivity costs same in both examples).

    1 0 Reply

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