Multi-cloud vs Hybrid cloud: The differences and the similarities

As the scope and popularity of the cloud increase, businesses tend to use it according to their needs. Today, Cloud includes Services such as SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS along with different models for Deployment. These are designed to best suit the unique requirements of an organization in terms of workload, security, administration, and infrastructure. 

Public Cloud 

Most businesses use the public cloud. In this, the application or the infrastructure is outsourced from a different party like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft to incorporate into the business. Although this is good and popular, it does not address all the concerns of the businesses. 
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 Private Cloud  
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Some organizations also began to adapt to their in-house Cloud using the Private cloud model. To deliver services like IaaS or PaaS, it uses virtualization with automated provisioning and orchestration. This method is useful to address the security and governance concerns of the business.  
 
But either of these is not the perfect solution for any organization. The combination of both of these techniques delivers and addresses more concerns of the business. This arises from 2 techniques: Hybrid cloud and Multi-cloud. Although both of these methods tend towards combining different clouds, there exists a basic difference between them. 

For a multi-cloud method, the organization uses multiple numbers of public cloud services. Often, these services are from different providers. These clouds are then used for different tasks. This shows that every cloud’s functionality is different. For example, different departments need different issues to be addressed: Research & Development (R&D) has different requirements compared to Marketing, and using different clouds for both produces effective results.

Also, since these clouds can be from multiple providers, it reduces dependency on a single supplier, which may result in reduced prices and increased flexibility. These clouds are operated along with in-house infrastructure.

In total, multi-cloud uses multiple public clouds that encompass private clouds and other infrastructure. In Contrast, Hybrid Cloud uses a combination of public and private clouds.

So, Hybrid cloud always consists of both public and private whereas, multi-cloud includes multiple public clouds that can include infrastructure and private clouds. Also, in a hybrid cloud, all the clouds and components work together, unlike in multi-cloud, where different clouds are used for different tasks.

For example, running an application in a hybrid cloud may use certain services such as load balancing and web services from the public cloud while using other database services from a private cloud. But it contains compute resources performing the same function in both these clouds.

In the case of the multi-cloud model, all the database services can use Azure while Networking & Computing actions use AWS. Here, the certain application uses only resources from Azure while others use only that of AWS. 


TL;DR

Multi-cloud and Hybrid cloud differ in their model and functionalities but ultimately both of them contribute towards effective business services. As predicted by Gartner, more than 50 per cent of global enterprises currently using the cloud will adapt to the all-in cloud model by 2021. 


For more information about cloud services or H-Town Technologies offerings, visit: https://www.htown-tech.com/cloud-computing.html