What is Cloud? What does Hybrid Cloud mean?

17 November 2020

The Cloud is a storage space that can be accessed at any time and in any place simply using any Internet connection.

Speaking about Cloud, we need to distinguish three types:

Private: an internal environment inside the organization, it thus allows storing the data in the same structure.
Public: the data is stored in environments offered by an external provider, while the hardware is located within the data center of the service provider.
Hybrid: a mix between the first two that aims at making the most of their advantages. For example, the infrastructure is managed not only by an external provider but also by an internal one.

Hybrid clouds are becoming increasingly fundamental in business IT structures – and this process will continue. That’s why a correct multi-cloud strategy will become the necessary base to minimize risks, e.g., downtime and data loss. Concerns and legislative limitations related to personal data, protected by privacy policies, are being overcome. Many cloud service providers are opening data centers all over the world to facilitate their inspection.

What are the advantages of Cloud?

Why are businesses adopting Cloud services? Data in a hybrid cloud solution can be freely moved between environments. This allows managing and controlling it as if it were in a proprietary data center. The main advantages are:

Cost reduction. Cloud can help to decrease infrastructure management costs. In addition to reducing hardware management costs (you don’t need to maintain your own IT infrastructure), Cloud has a pay-per-use basis.
Software updates. The service provider takes care of the upgrades as well as the hardware maintenance and management costs. This allows the company to not only be always updated on the latest technologies but also comply with the legislative norms, as the provider continuously makes corrective or evolutive updates.
Cloud security. In case of a grave emergency, the providers can recover systems, data, and infrastructure necessary for the service thanks to disaster recovery systems.
Load balancing means dividing the workload between several servers. This makes the system more reliable and scalable, i.e., able to expand or decrease upon necessity.

To face such an elaborate project with numerous Hardware and Software components to administer and the ultrafast tool adoption expected, the classic on-premise formula would have slowed us down significantly. The Cloud Azure offered a wide range of up-to-date and ready-to-go hardware platforms (strictly respecting the subjects and data privacy) allowed using the expertise of IRION (Partner Microsoft) for a direct and optimal configuration with the strategies of scalability clearly defined. It also allowed the Bank’s ICT Team ICT to focus their efforts on the project streams for which their knowledge of the ICT Bank ecosystem is fundamental. Adopting this Sourcing model allowed us to go live with the new platform incredibly quickly (1 month) and make all the necessary adjustments in an agile way through direct experience with the live system. The highest quality of the raw material (hardware), the partner’s specialization, and the short supply chain (the aspects traditional for Italian industrial leaders) allowed us to introduce the innovations with the highest speed required these days.

Credem Group
ICT Data & Governance

Irion EDM: the platform for Cloud and not only.

Irion EDM is an entirely metadata-driven Enterprise Data Management system.

With Irion EDM, you can discover, understand, validate, transform, mask, and govern your data. All these functions are available regardless of the data source, be it on-premise, cloud, or hybrid. In this latter case, transparent access is granted by VPN. It allows the users to work with on-premise and cloud resources in exactly the same way. A variety of connectors allows access to your data sources and reduces the total cost of ownership. We will see to your solution being always updated! Choose the Cloud service such as Microsoft Azure platform, Amazon AWS, or Google Cloud Platform – or build one thanks to the Irion technology! Choose IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS Cloud to create a custom Data Management platform that best meets your needs.