If you’re just looking into the benefits of cloud backup solutions, you may well have heard mention of hybrid cloud. But what exactly is this and what could it mean for you and your business?

Essentially, a hybrid cloud model is simply the combination of a private cloud platform or on-premise infrastructure (that’s been designed solely for the use of a single company) and a public cloud platform. These operate independently but typically communicate with each other over an encrypted connection to ensure that information can pass securely from one to the other.

What this means is that businesses are able to have their cake and eat it too. Using private cloud infrastructure, they’re able to take advantage of the speed and flexibility of their own infrastructure either onsite or in their datacentre. This enables LAN speed restores in the event of a disaster.

Using public cloud, they’re able to take advantage of the typical cloud benefits including reduced or even no upfront expenditure, infinite scalability, reduced management overhead, the expertise of a specialist service provider, an offsite copy for disaster recovery and paying only for what you use now, not what you’ll need in 3 years.

If you’re keen to find out more about hybrid cloud computing and whether it’s right for you and your business, watch this video on the Gartner website that should help explain the intricacies even more. You can also explore the topic further on ZDnet, which features news articles and insight into the whys and wherefores of the hybrid cloud.