Hybrid Cloud Storage: 4 Key Decision Points
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Published: 19 Dec 2023
Nearly all enterprise IT projects involve decisions about where to store data.
The public cloud holds perhaps more than half of all business data. That volume of data held on cloud-based systems, especially by the hyperscalers – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure – has grown steadily over the past few years.
Research by Aptum, a managed services and consulting firm, found that 77% of firms use the public cloud and 86% expect to use hybrid or multicloud services.
However, raw statistics mask what is often a complex decision-making process that involves assessment of workloads, performance, regulation and security, and costs. Here, we look at four key decisions about whether data should be stored on-site, or in the cloud – or a combination of both.
- Is the data mostly processed on-prem or in the cloud?
For the best performance, system architects need to minimise latency between applications and storage. To access cloud storage via the public internet inevitably increases latency. Internet connections are also more prone to variable performance and general reliability issues.
This suggests that for best performance, data should be stored on-premise. For the most critical applications, this is still usually the case.
But the decision is not always clear cut. Different architectures may also be needed, depending on whether the data is being consumed by an application or a human analyst.
- How frequently is data accessed?
For some use cases – such as archiving and “cold” storage – cloud makes a lot of sense.
With data accessed infrequently, performance is less critical. Cloud-based archiving and backup applications are designed to work in the background,