There are a variety of cloud computing solutions that you can leverage to meet your business needs.

The most popular are multi-cloud computing, hybrid cloud computing, and distributed cloud.

When deciding on which solution to implement in your infrastructure, you need to know how they work and the benefits of each. In this article, we will help you understand the critical information when it comes to making sense of cloud computing.

What Is Multi-Cloud Computing? 

Multi-cloud computing is similar to what it sounds like and what you’d imagine; it uses multiple cloud computing and storage services in a single network architecture.

This architecture has cloud software, assets, apps, and more hosted on several cloud environments — hence the “multi-cloud” part. It can be all-public, all-private, or a combination of both.

Multi-cloud computing uses two or more cloud services from multiple cloud service providers. 

Businesses decide to choose multi-cloud computing to minimize data loss and downtime. This advantage comes because your cloud system is not dependent on one environment to run. If one ecosystem goes down, you will have another to back up your infrastructure.

Multi-cloud systems also increase storage availability and computing power.

The recent cloud computing developments have moved users from private clouds to multiple public clouds to ensure a more efficiently run environment.

Multi-cloud management requires companies to have mastery in complex cloud management as well as multiple cloud providers. 

Benefits of Multi-Cloud Computing

A multi-cloud strategy gives you the freedom and flexibility to go with multiple vendors rather than being locked in with one vendor that may excel in one service but come up short in others.

With so much data being processed, outages are bound to happen — either due to natural disasters or human error.

Multiple cloud environments protect your business by ensuring the necessary resources and storage solutions are always running, limiting downtime.

This type of computing can also help organizations with administration, risk management, and compliance regulations.

Hybrid Cloud Computing Defined

Hybrid cloud computing allows for the communication between the servers of your private cloud with multiple public cloud solutions. Proprietary software enables communication between each service.

This strategy allows companies more flexibility between cloud computing workloads as resource needs and costs fluctuate.

Hybrid cloud computing services allow organizations to have more control over their data, making it an ideal environment for many companies. This gives businesses the ability to store their data on private cloud servers while also leveraging the resources utilized on their public cloud.

Unlike multi-cloud computing solutions, hybrid cloud computing is managed from a single location. This lets administrators control everything on one platform instead of individually managing each platform on a multi-cloud system.

Having multiple cloud resources creates more avenues for security breaches, and having one location to manage with hybrid cloud computing prevents this. 

Advantages of Hybrid Cloud Computing

Hybrid cloud computing gives IT administrators more control over their company’s data. It also offers stakeholders the option to choose the environment that best suits each specific networking need.

Most organizations don’t use the same amount of power each day; hybrid cloud computing allows administrators to use “more power” when necessary.

For example, insurance companies have open enrollment applications submitted once or twice a year, while the environment supporting this may go virtually unused for 10 or more months of the year. There is no reason to be paying or using a robust environment that is not used for the majority of a year.

Businesses who opt for hybrid cloud computing save on costs because of this. 

A hybrid system also requires less space than a private model. This is beneficial for startups or small companies that can’t afford to invest in a large private data center.

What Is Distributed Cloud Computing?

Distributed cloud computing is a collection of computers working together while acting as one centralized network. This allows operations to go as expected if one or more devices happen to fail.

In a distributed cloud computing environment, the computer systems can be run in the same physical location or in multiple locations that are close together. If the environment is run in multiple locations, their connection will be completed through a local network or by a WAN (Wide Area Network). 

Distributed computing can be made up of various configurations, including personal workstations and mainframes.

How Distributed Cloud Can Help

Distributed cloud computing allows organizations the ability to easily scale horizontally by distributing resources among new machines as workload increases. If one data center goes offline, the others can pick up the slack with distributed cloud, making this system more reliable than others.

Distributed cloud provides better performance and lower latency because the traffic will come from the closest data center.

This type of cloud system is often less expensive than other alternatives, especially larger centralized systems. This is because a distributed system is made up of multiple smaller computers, making it more cost-effective than a mainframe machine.

Distributed cloud breaks data into smaller sizes, which cuts down the time it takes to solve issues within the network. In terms of scaling costs, using multiple devices is more efficient in the long term on a larger scale.

Which Cloud Computing Solution Fits Your Needs?

After gaining a better understanding of multi-cloud computing, hybrid cloud, and distributed cloud computing, deciding which computing system to go with should be easy.

Remember to choose the best solution to resolve your organization’s problems. Do your due diligence in researching each cloud computing system and understanding the pros and cons of each before implementing a new environment for your company.