PRO+ Premium Content/Storage

The promise of smooth-functioning, cost-effective hybrid cloud storage has long been of interest to IT professionals. "Hybrid" has been in the cloud lexicon from the beginning, when the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued its original definitions of various cloud deployment models. Hybrid cloud storage broadens the workload deployment choice to more than one cloud and enables compelling use cases, such as off-site backup, disaster recovery and cloud bursting. Done right, an enterprise hybrid cloud improves IT agility while reducing cost. Up until recently, however, major challenges kept companies from embracing the promise of hybrid clouds, particularly for primary storage. These obstacles fall into four categories: Lack of standard interfaces and tools. Workload portability, a prerequisite for hybrid clouds, has been hampered by a lack of standard APIs and a lack of runtime environments that let companies easily move their apps and data between on-premises and public clouds. While containers have facilitated ...