Hybrid cloud environments are rapidly becoming the backbone of modern IT strategies, offering the best of both the public and private cloud. Organizations across various industries leverage the hybrid cloud to enhance flexibility, security, and scalability, and meet the demands of a more dynamic digital landscape. This blog explores key hybrid cloud use cases, focusing on how industries like finance, healthcare, government, and education can benefit from taking this approach. We’ll also highlight how Veeam supports these strategies with comprehensive data protection and management solutions.
Why Hybrid Cloud?
Hybrid cloud models offer unique advantages that cater to the evolving needs of modern businesses, including:
- Flexibility: Organizations can dynamically allocate workloads between on-premises and cloud environments to adapt to changes in demand and optimize resource use.
- Scalability: The ability to scale resources up or down across different environments allows businesses to meet increasing data and application demands without making large upfront investments.
- Security: The hybrid cloud enables organizations to keep sensitive data on-premises while leveraging cloud services for less critical workloads. This helps ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and enhances overall security.
- Cost optimization: By strategically distributing workloads across public and private clouds, organizations can achieve significant cost savings while maintaining performance and security standards.
Top Hybrid Cloud Use Cases
- BCDR
Hybrid cloud is an ideal solution for business continuity and disaster recovery planning. Organizations can replicate critical data across multiple environments to ensure that their operations can continue even in the event of an outage. By storing a synchronized copy of essential data in the cloud, businesses can quickly recover and restore operations to minimize downtime and data loss. This approach is particularly valuable for industries that require high availability and data integrity.
- DevOps and Agile Development
For DevOps teams, hybrid cloud environments offer the flexibility needed to develop, test, and deploy applications across multiple platforms. The ability to move workloads between on-premises and cloud environments allows for continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) and accelerates development cycles. The hybrid cloud also allows teams to experiment with new technologies without impacting core business operations, which helps foster innovation and reduce time-to-market.
- Data Backup and Archiving
Data management is a critical concern for organizations that deal with large volumes of information. The hybrid cloud provides a scalable solution for data backup and archiving, enabling businesses to store active data on-premises for fast access while archiving older, less frequently accessed data in the cloud. This model optimizes storage costs and ensures that data is easily retrievable for regulatory audits or DR scenarios.
- HPC
High-performance computing (HPC) tasks, such as data analytics, machine learning, and financial modeling, require significant computational power. Hybrid cloud environments allow organizations to leverage cloud resources for these intensive tasks and scale upp processing power as needed while keeping sensitive data secure and on-premises. This approach is particularly beneficial for industries like finance, healthcare, and research, where the demand for processing power can fluctuate significantly.
Industries with strict regulatory requirements, such as finance, healthcare, and government, benefit from the hybrid cloud by maintaining control over critical data while leveraging cloud services for additional capacity. This ensures that sensitive information remains secure and compliant with regulations while taking advantage of the scalability and flexibility of the cloud. The hybrid cloud also allows organizations to meet compliance requirements more efficiently by automating data protection and ensuring that data is stored in the appropriate locations.
Hybrid Cloud Industry-specific Use Cases
Financial Services
Customer Case Study: CMG
In the financial sector, hybrid cloud environments enable institutions to manage sensitive customer data securely while using cloud services to improve customer experiences and operational efficiency. Applications like online banking and trading platforms can be hosted in the cloud for scalability and accessibility, while core financial data remains on-premises. This set up not only ensures compliance with industry regulations but also enhances the agility and resilience of financial services.
Healthcare
Customer Case Study: CIOX
Hybrid cloud environments are particularly valuable in healthcare, where patient data privacy and regulatory compliance are paramount. By storing sensitive patient data on-premises and using the cloud for data analysis and the storage of non-critical information, healthcare providers can ensure compliance with regulations like HIPAA. Additionally, the hybrid cloud supports the scalability that’s needed to manage growing amounts of data from electronic health records (EHRs) and other digital health initiatives.
Government
Customer Case Study: Northumberland County Council
Government agencies often handle highly sensitive data that must be protected from unauthorized access and cyberthreats. The hybrid cloud provides a solution that allows agencies to maintain control over their critical data while also using cloud services to enhance service delivery and operational efficiency. For example, public services can be hosted in the cloud to offer scalability and improved accessibility to citizens. At the same time, classified information remains securely stored on-premises under stringent regulations like GDPR to ensure compliance and safeguarding citizen privacy. Veeam’s hybrid cloud solution also supports stringent DR requirements, a typical stipulation in government contracts. This helps ensure that operations can be swiftly restored after any disruption to maintain continuity and the integrity of government services.
Education
Customer Case Study: National Library of Scotland
Educational institutions, such as the National Library of Scotland, benefit significantly from hybrid cloud solutions by supporting online learning platforms in the cloud while keeping sensitive information, like student records, securely stored on-premises. This approach allowed the library to scale its IT resources efficiently and meet the growing demand for digital learning and ensures that both students and faculty have access to necessary tools and resources without compromising data security. In compliance with GDPR, our hybrid cloud solution ensures that all sensitive data is stored and processed within the local region to prevent any data from inadvertently crossing borders. This local storage solution not only adheres to strict data protection regulations but also enhances the security and privacy of their user data.
Real Estate and Construction
Customer Case Study: McGrath Estate Agents
Real estate groups, like McGrath Estate Agents, can benefit significantly from hybrid cloud solutions by securely storing critical property data on-premises while using the cloud to support operational efficiency and business growth. By migrating 99% of their on-premises data to Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure, McGrath was able to optimize their data protection, streamline management, and scale as new offices joined the organization. This hybrid approach enabled McGrath to maintain control over sensitive information while taking advantage of cloud scalability to support rapid business expansion and employee productivity. With Veeam’s secure and automated backup and recovery, McGrath ensures data integrity, regulatory compliance, and cost-effective management of its fast-growing data. This solution not only supports business continuity, but reduces data protection costs by 50% too, saving McGrath $100,000 annually.
Transportation
Customer Case Study: Gulf Air
Airlines like Gulf Air benefit significantly from hybrid cloud solutions by using cloud-based backups to ensure uninterrupted access to critical data while maintaining a high level of service. By moving to a hybrid multi-cloud environment with Microsoft 365 and AWS, Gulf Air gained full visibility and control over its data, allowing it to support a growing remote workforce and deliver a seamless user experience to passengers. With Veeam’s comprehensive data protection solution, Gulf Air achieved faster backup times, improved data availability, and reduced management complexity, which enabled them to focus on innovation and enhancing passenger satisfaction.
Gulf Air’s hybrid cloud strategy empowered the airline to streamline its IT operations and ensure that their data is protected against cyberthreats and compliance risks to support its cloud-first mandate from the Bahraini government. With the flexibility and scalability of Veeam, Gulf Air is able to ensrue high availability across its critical systems, including its flight management software and customer relationship tools.
Food and Beverage
Customer Case Study: SodaStream
Beverage companies, such as SodaStream, benefit significantly from hybrid cloud solutions by protecting critical IT systems, including those that support manufacturing, business intelligence, and financial operations. SodaStream, the world’s leading sparkling water brand, replaced multiple backup solutions with Veeam Availability Suite to ensure the reliable and fast recovery of 55 TB of data across its global operations. By leveraging Veeam, SodaStream optimized its DR strategy and streamlined backup management, which ended up reducing costs and administrative overhead. Veeam’s intuitive solution also supports compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), helping SodaStream meet regulatory requirements and maintain data integrity across its hybrid environment.
This approach enabled SodaStream to maintain operational efficiency, protect sensitive business data, and avoid interruptions that could impact production and service delivery. In addition, Veeam’s comprehensive backup and recovery capabilities provide the flexibility and scalability needed to support the company’s continued growth while reducing annual tape costs by $25,000 and saving significant administrative time.
Hybrid Cloud Challenges and Considerations
While the hybrid cloud offers numerous benefits, it also presents challenges that organizations must address, including:
- Security: Managing security across multiple environments can be complex and require robust encryption, identity management, and continuous monitoring to protect data. Ensuring consistent security policies across on-premises and cloud environments is essential for maintaining data integrity and compliance.
- Management complexity: Coordinating workloads across on-premises and cloud environments requires advanced management tools that provide visibility and control over all resources. This means organizations need to invest in solutions that simplify hybrid cloud management and automate routine tasks.
- Cost management: While the hybrid cloud can optimize costs, organizations must carefully monitor and manage resource usage to avoid unexpected expenses. This includes understanding the cost implications of data transfer between environments and ensuring that workloads are placed in the most cost-effective environment.
How Veeam Supports Hybrid Cloud Use Cases
Veeam provides comprehensive solutions designed to address the specific needs of hybrid cloud environments:
- Unified management: Veeam offers a single platform for managing data protection across on-premises and cloud environments, simplifying the complexity of hybrid cloud management. With centralized control, IT teams can monitor and manage all resources from one interface and ensure that their data is protected and available when needed.
- Automated backup and recovery: Veeam’s solutions automate backup and recovery processes to ensure that data is always protected and can be quickly restored in the event of disaster. This level of automation reduces the risk of human error and ensures that recovery objectives are met consistently.
- Scalability and flexibility: Veeam’s platform is designed to scale with your hybrid cloud environment and provide flexible deployment options that meet your organization’s unique needs. Whether you need to scale up for a temporary spike in demand or scale down to reduce costs, Veeam can support your cloud strategy with ease.
- Security and compliance: Veeam’s solutions include advanced security features like encryption and access controls to ensure that all data, whether on-premises or in the cloud, can meet regulatory requirements. These features help organizations maintain compliance with industry regulations while protecting sensitive information from cyberthreats.
- Customer success stories: Veeam has a proven track record of helping organizations across various industries implement successful hybrid cloud strategies. Financial institutions, healthcare providers, government agencies, and educational institutions have all benefited from Veeam’s data protection solutions, which ensure that critical data is secure, accessible, and compliant with industry standards.
Conclusion
Hybrid cloud environments offer unparalleled flexibility, security, and scalability, making them an ideal choice for organizations across various industries. By leveraging the hybrid cloud, businesses can optimize their IT operations and ensure that they remain agile and resilient in a rapidly changing digital landscape. Veeam’s solutions also empower organizations to protect their data, optimize costs, and ensure compliance across diverse environments. Explore how Veeam can support your hybrid cloud strategy by visiting Veeam’s Hybrid Cloud Solutions.