Multi-Cloud vs. Hybrid Cloud: What’s the Difference?

To understand the architectures of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud solutions, it’s helpful to look at how cloud computing works. Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, data governance, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale.

That’s why the growth of cloud computing has exploded globally, especially in enterprises looking for a secure way to scale and optimize their operations. In fact, enterprise IT spending on cloud computing in high-growth verticals will overtake spending on traditional IT in 2025, according to Gartner. These key markets are application software, infrastructure software, business process services, and system infrastructure.

By 2025, 51% of IT spending in these four categories will have shifted from traditional on-premises solutions to the public cloud, compared to 41% in 2022, according to Gartner. Almost two-thirds (65.9%) of spending on application software will be for cloud technologies in 2025, up from 57.7% in 2022.

That means that more and more enterprises will continue to look for ways to optimize, scale, and secure their IT operations, using either multi-cloud or hybrid cloud computing. This blog post will explore the benefits and challenges of each type.

Many enterprises choose to turn over the management of their applications and data to public clouds, like Microsoft Azure or AWS. They want to rely on the scalability, diverse capabilities, and security in these public clouds.

Multi-cloud definition:  Multi-cloud generally refers to an approach in which an organization uses cloud computing services from public cloud providers to meet specific business needs and customer demands. It enables organizations to choose the best services and features offered by public cloud services to enhance digital experiences, while improving business continuity and operational stability and safety. Being able to use more than one public cloud vendor greatly expands the capabilities available to organizations.

Note: Hybrid cloud is technically a “subset” of types of multi-cloud solutions, because hybrid cloud solutions use more than one cloud. But in general, “multi-cloud” refers to using several public clouds, while “hybrid cloud” refers to the integration of one or more public clouds with a company’s private cloud or private data center.

Multi-cloud example/scenario: Organizations that work with a variety of industries and customers in different regions can rely on public clouds’ ability to address the security and compliance aspects of doing business in different verticals or countries. For example, there are data privacy requirements for companies doing business in the European Union; data governance must align with the General Data Regulation and Protection rules of privacy. The same is true for companies working with healthcare organizations (HIPAA requirements), or varying levels of security with governments. Multi-cloud solutions help enable this important security flexibility.

Multi-cloud approach: A successful multi-cloud approach requires a holistic strategy that encompasses technology, governance, and operations. It should include the use of standard APIs and technologies to ensure portability and interoperability between cloud providers, the adoption of a cloud-native architecture that leverages the strengths of each provider, and the use of a cloud management platform that provides a single view of the multi-cloud environment.

There are many upsides to using a multi-cloud solution. Here are some of them:

• Specialization: Companies can select the best cloud service for each task it requires. For example, an organization can choose a cloud provider that specializes in services for data analytics or artificial intelligence. It could choose a different provider that offers high-performance computing capabilities for compute-intensive workloads. Companies can also choose the optimal connectivity provider – which is not an option for private cloud.
• Lower costs: Because public cloud providers have economies of scale, it can be more cost-effective to use multi-cloud solutions from them, as against setting up a self-contained private cloud which then has to be maintained on premises.
  
• Flexibility and scalability: Because public cloud companies offer more capabilities, a multi-cloud solution can result in flexible and scalable operations, especially as an organization grows into different verticals and different geographic regions.
  
• Increased backup and redundancy: Multi-cloud solutions can take advantage of the broader capabilities in public clouds for data backup and storage options. Relying on an on-premises data center or cloud can mean limitations on backup and storage abilities.
  

Even with its many potential benefits for scalability and capacity tailored to a company’s needs, multi-cloud can carry some challenges too. Following are common drawbacks that some companies using multi-cloud solutions may experience.

• Increased complexity: With more cloud solutions comes more complexity. Sometimes one cloud services vendor may make an update that can complicate the operation of another one. With more compute services, there naturally comes more complexity, so it’s critical to create a method of holistically viewing the clouds’ operations, and to respond quickly to any potential speed bumps.
  
• Security concerns: It can be challenging to track consumption of cloud services, along with required governance and regulatory demands. It can also be a challenge to set common security measurements among multiple cloud environments if one is relying solely on public cloud native security functionalities.  That’s why it’s key to minimize risk and maximize security by having a secure, scalable multi-cloud management system in place.
  
• Differing costs: There is no one-size-fits-all multi-cloud solution, and there is no single cost, or even cost range, among the various public cloud providers. It can be challenging to compare offerings and expenses.

In a hybrid cloud solution, applications are run with a combination of computing, storage, and services in different environments—public clouds and private clouds, including on-premises data centers or “edge” locations.

A hybrid cloud solution can offer the best of both cloud worlds – the hands-on control of the internal data center or private cloud, and the flexibility and capacity of public clouds. Using a hybrid cloud can also be an important first step for an organization’s move to a total public cloud solution.

Determining where data will be stored and how it will be accessed is an important element to consider while implementing a hybrid cloud environment. One of the most common data storage strategies in a hybrid cloud environment is to use the public cloud to store less frequently accessed data, as well as for use as backup, disaster recovery, and archival purposes.

Organizations often choose to store frequently accessed or sensitive data on a private cloud or in on-premises storage to ensure greater control and security, though this may require more upfront investment in infrastructure.

There are many advantages to using a hybrid cloud model. Here are some of the most important ones:

• Tighter control: Many organizations choose to continue to physically manage some of their data in their own data centers or cloud. This could be because of proprietary or security concerns or both.
• Flexibility: A business may use a public cloud to host and manage some of its less frequently accessed data, to free up on-premises data center capacity to accommodate the most frequently used.
• Backup and disaster recovery: An organization may want the additional breadth and depth of a public cloud as a safeguard against data risk. If some kind of disaster were to affect an on-premises cloud, critical data stored there alone could be at risk, or worse, lost.
• Workload portability: Using a hybrid cloud, organizations can move and adapt data and applications between on-premises systems and the cloud, or between public cloud providers. Portability is a key consideration when designing an application or service. 
• Data integration: A hybrid cloud allows an organization to bring together data from many sources to gain greater visibility. This can help alleviate or eliminate the legacy issues of data silos.  

Hybrid cloud models:

There are multiple ways to configure hybrid cloud environments to address specific computing needs and circumstances. 

• Cloud bursting is a hybrid configuration method in which public cloud resources are employed only when on-premises compute infrastructure reaches peak capacity. In other words, when the internal data center reaches 100% of processing capacity, the overflow workloads burst into the public cloud for processing. Cloud bursting is a cost-effective way to support varying demand patterns and seasonal spikes in need for compute resources. 
• Cloud replication is a hybrid cloud model that involves duplicating and mirroring data from on-premises storage to the public cloud for backup and disaster recovery scenarios, or to increase the availability and accessibility of data for customers or distributed teams. 
• Cloud tiering is a data storage strategy that involves movement of data between different storage tiers, based on the importance of the data and how frequently it is accessed. Storage tiers are often defined as extending from “hot” storage, meaning data that must be immediately available for use by applications, through to “cold” storage, which includes archival data that is rarely accessed. In a typical hybrid cloud model, hot data would be stored in the data center to enable fast processing while colder data could be stored remotely in the public cloud for cost savings.