On the enterprise cloud, there are private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud and other options. If in the past, enterprises would be troubled by the choice of cloud solutions, then in recent years, more and more survey data show that hybrid cloud has become the most desired way for government and enterprise users to use the cloud.

Hybrid cloud, one of the hottest areas of IT infrastructure, has almost all the representative vendors. From the public cloud service providers represented by AWS and UCloud, to the basic software providers such as VMware and Red Hat, to the traditional hardware manufacturers such as Inspur and Dell, and even some start-ups and integrators, a large number of hybrid cloud companies are involved, which shows their enthusiasm.

Gartner predicts that 90% of businesses and organizations will utilize hybrid cloud management infrastructure by 2020. Behind the fragrance of hybrid cloud, on the one hand, it is because of the acceleration of the digital transformation of government and enterprise users and the general trend of the cloud, which brings the real demand for hybrid cloud. On the other hand, new applications and new scenarios continue to emerge. Hybrid cloud has become an important “carrier” for government and enterprise users to apply cloud native, big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies in new scenarios, and has gradually become the first choice of most users in the field of infrastructure.

Today, the hybrid cloud market seems to be in a flurry of products and solutions, with distinct technical paths. However, as more and more users migrate their applications to the hybrid cloud environment, the core demands of the hybrid cloud become increasingly clear, that is, more attention should be paid to security in the hybrid cloud environment, the hardware resources should better match their own business, and the open platform should be needed to realize the connection on the cloud and under the cloud. And “security, customization and openness” is the neutral cloud service provider represented by UCloud, which is the most core key in the construction of new hybrid cloud solutions.

The hybrid cloud can’t just be a “compromise”

Why have hybrid clouds become so popular in recent years?

At present, the industrial Internet is booming. The demand of traditional government and enterprise users, the main group of Shangyun, is very consistent with the characteristics of hybrid cloud. These user groups are accelerating their digital transformation, and their business scale is usually large. They are eager for public cloud to make infrastructure resources nimble and flexible in response to business needs, and they also want to be more private and controllable. Zhang Zheng, head of UCloud hybrid cloud product line, said bluntly: “Traditional medium and large government and enterprise customers will be the biggest demand side of hybrid cloud.”

“The hybrid cloud is more of a ‘compromise’ option.” Zhang Zheng said that from the perspective of traditional government and enterprise users’ IT infrastructure, technology, IT personnel composition and so on, the traditional architecture is adjusted to the public cloud all at once, the impact is too big, the user will not adapt to the situation, and the hybrid cloud is the most in line with the needs of users at the present stage.

The emergence of hybrid cloud enables users to make more choices in cloud computing deployment, rather than a binary decision between private cloud and public cloud. From the perspective of user demand, a very important purpose of hybrid cloud is to enable users to better use various resources and technologies of public cloud. Therefore, while the hybrid cloud meets the overall needs of users, it is crucial to integrate the mature product experience and use experience of the public cloud into the hybrid cloud, so that users will have no sense of difference in actual use.

“There is no ‘compromise’ in the experience of using a hybrid cloud. For example, when using the public cloud, the console can achieve extremely fine use and operation. In the hybrid cloud, it is also necessary to provide users with these visible functions to reduce operational difficulty, and help users use resources more reasonably through intuitive data to achieve the purpose of reducing cost and increasing efficiency.” Zhang Zheng added.

In fact, according to Gartner’s 2020 Cloud Computing Technology Maturity Curve, the hybrid cloud shows a steady Slope of Enlightenment, which means that the hybrid cloud will usher in a wider range of use. It can be said that entering 2021, hybrid cloud ushered in its most important market inflection point.

The arrival of the hybrid cloud inflection point also marks the new trend will accelerate the arrival.

What are the new trends in the hybrid cloud

In the current hybrid cloud market, there are a lot of products and solutions. As more and more users accept and adopt the deployment method of hybrid cloud, it is also driving the new trend of hybrid cloud in products, technologies and usage patterns.

First of all, it will be increasingly important to connect a variety of heterogeneous resources. Hybrid cloud environment means that it will be normal for users to deploy their resources in different locations. Some resources are deployed in the public cloud, while some resources belong to the privatized hosting environment. These different resource deployments may be cross-service providers and cross-regions. However, hybrid cloud needs to further abstract all kinds of cloud resources to provide users with unified form and consistent experience. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure the network access of various heterogeneous resources.

“For example, when a user’s overall big data business suddenly changes from a managed cloud to a public cloud, traffic transactions often require a great deal of internal network connectivity to ensure the network connectivity between cloud VPC and resources in the managed area; In addition, many global enterprises need to be able to network flexibly on a global scale and connect in seconds.” Zhang Zheng said.

In fact, many of the current hybrid cloud providers have done a lot of work for the network access of heterogeneous resources. For example, UCloud will upgrade its backbone network architecture to 3.0 this year to further improve the network access and scheduling ability of hybrid cloud under heterogeneous resources. In the future, it will launch multi-WAN products to meet users’ network access under heterogeneous environments, and reduce users’ access threshold and cost expenditure to the greatest extent.

Second, the evolution of hybrid cloud customization hardware accelerates. In today’s Hybrid cloud technology genre, Packaged Hybrid is the first to bear the brunt. In other words, it provides users with an overall package solution, promoted by AWS, UCloud and other public cloud service providers. This mode enables users to use the entire technology stack of public cloud service providers. Customized hardware plays an increasingly important role in these integrated solutions.

These hardware are usually flexible, customizable, integrated delivery, and matched with the resource models of the public cloud service providers themselves, which can meet multiple usage scenarios such as virtualization, big data, storage, AI training, AI reasoning and so on. “In a hybrid cloud usage scenario, users need absolute physical computing resources and physical isolation capabilities, and these resources need to be highly matched with the business in terms of overall computing power and cost performance,” Zhang said.

For example, a series of hardware accessories including CPU, memory, user’s hard disk and graphics card can be highly customized according to user’s business demands to help users select the most suitable hardware environment and the most appropriate hardware ratio for business operation. “The hardware in the hybrid cloud is highly customized, which will greatly reduce unnecessary hardware costs.”

Third, the hosting of hybrid cloud is strengthened. To some extent, hybrid cloud brings complexity to the IT environment of many users that did not exist before. This complexity is reflected in multiple levels such as technology, operation and maintenance, and management. Now, more and more users are choosing to work with cloud service providers to help them achieve unified management and overall seamless experience of hybrid cloud infrastructure through hosting services, thus significantly reducing the complexity of traditional hosting. Zhang Zheng said: “The cloud service provider’s strong operation and maintenance team and perfect operation and maintenance system can help users to operate and manage the mixed cloud environment, greatly reduce the complexity and ensure a seamless experience.”

UCloudHow to play the hybrid cloud card

As the first cloud computing stock in China, UCloud has been expanding its territory in the public cloud market since its establishment. At the same time, UCloud is also one of the earliest practitioners of hybrid cloud services in the industry. Since the first hybrid cloud service was provided in 2012, UCloud has been working in the field of hybrid cloud for nearly ten years. Through continuous accumulation of in-depth insights into related technologies, products and user needs of hybrid cloud, UCloud has created a new hybrid cloud solution with security, customization and openness.

At present, as hybrid cloud is gradually adopted by more users, security problems and hidden dangers of hybrid cloud also begin to emerge, and users’ security demands for hybrid cloud are on the rise. As a neutral cloud computing service provider, UCloud puts security at the top of its list of new hybrid cloud solutions to ensure the security and reliability of the hybrid cloud environment from multiple levels such as data and network.

For example, in the hybrid cloud architecture, data often needs to flow and be used among multiple clouds, and data security is the most sensitive and concerned of users at present. Neutral cloud services like UCloud naturally have the advantage of being “neutral, not involved in the user industry”. In addition, UCloud has also launched big data safe house and other products, which have been widely used in many governments, finance and other fields, and its data security capability has been fully verified and affirmed.

On the basis of security guarantee, according to the diversified demands of government and enterprise users for hybrid cloud deployment, UCloud adds customization attributes that are distinct from traditional solutions to the new solution, including “self-built resource customization, self-developed hardware customization, network architecture customization” and so on, to provide users with sufficient options.

In terms of customized deployment, UCloud has two self-built data centers in Shanghai Qingpu and Wulanchabu, which can provide users with the ability to customize the computer room and help users achieve the maximum cost optimization from a single cabinet to the overall computer room. The hardware of UCloud hybrid cloud gold wing physical machine is customizable to adapt to the real demands of users’ business environment and build the most appropriate hybrid cloud hardware environment for users. In the face of the characteristics of various forms of network architecture in the heterogeneous environment of users, UCloud customized network architecture service can help users realize the deployment of the overall hybrid cloud network architecture and the interconnection between networks.

What is more rare is that UCloud’s new hybrid cloud solution adheres to the principle of openness. Through the open intelligent resource management platform, automatic network platform and all-round operation and maintenance platform, the integration of cloud above and cloud below is truly achieved, so as to ensure that different types of users can be implemented in the self-built IT environment.

“UCloud has been deeply engaged in the hybrid cloud track for many years, and has been equipped with all-round service capabilities from data center site selection, hardware equipment selection, network architecture design, multi-cloud intercommunication management, container transformation, and post-stage operation and maintenance operation. In 2021, UCloud will successively put into use the two self-built data centers in Shanghai Qingpu and Wulanchabu, and connect with the existing superior resources to build a resource structure in front of the store and back of the factory, providing sufficient guarantee for the new generation of hybrid cloud services. In the future, we have full confidence in the hybrid cloud.” Zhang Zheng said finally.