No technology is perfect, and the cloud is no exception. But that doesn’t mean the benefits don’t vastly outweigh the drawbacks. You already know how cloud technology improves collaboration, enhances workforce mobility, and simplifies business processes. But if you’re worried about those drawbacks, we don’t blame you, after all, your business depends on your cautiousness. 

 The truth is many small business owners like yourself have concerns about the security of public clouds and the flexibility of private clouds. And that’s why hybrid clouds are so popular.

 Hybrid cloud allows you to take advantage of dynamic workload balancing capabilities on-premises, in private clouds, and in public clouds, too. For example, you can leave all your sensitive applications and data in-house and still access them from anywhere at any time.

 So unless your business is required by industry regulations not to store data outside a private data center, there should be no reason for you to ignore hybrid cloud technology.

 Having said that, it’s time to dispel the most common hybrid cloud myths that are holding your business back.

 Constant latency

Latency issues result in slow application performance, which is intolerable for any business. However, identifying potential sources of latency in a hybrid cloud environment will allow you to easily work around them.

 More often than not, proximity is the culprit of latency, not the technology itself. This is because in a hybrid cloud platform, your data are hosted in a virtual space, whereas the machines hosting those data are actually on-premises. As such, the greater the distance between these machines, the higher the potential for latency.

 Choosing a cloud service provider whose office is in the same region as your data center will minimize latency, if not eliminate it altogether.

 Lack of data privacy

This concern stems from the fact that hybrid clouds include an element of public cloud. That’s what has convinced so many business owners that privacy will be sacrificed.

 However, Gartner Research revealed that the public cloud represents a more secure starting point than in-house implementations. This is because cloud providers’ reputations rest on meeting regulatory requirements, security requirements, and SLAs -- in other words, their success relies on their clients’ success.

 Take SimplyClouds, for instance. Our team of certified technicians prioritize cloud efficiency and client confidentiality above all else. We guarantee 99.9% uptime and even participate in third-party audits if need be.

 Another thing that many business owners tend to forget is the fact that threats extend to physical security too. The Stuxnet worm is a great example as it is believed to have spread through USB flash drives and equipment compromised while in transit. With a hybrid cloud infrastructure, these sorts of threats can be detected and mitigated quickly without the high cost of eradicating them internally.

 The future of hybrid cloud

Gartner predicts that by the year 2020, 95% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault, not the provider’s. This is because the latency and security concerns of hybrid clouds have little to do with the technology itself, but more with a company’s internal security and governance process.

 Over the years, Microsoft has added hybrid clouds to their offerings, and other tech leaders like Amazon and IBM have done the same. This proves that hybrid cloud will continue to grow in popularity and that most concerns about it holding businesses back stem from unwarranted anxiety a lot more than demonstrated danger.

 No technology is perfect, so what it really comes down to is finding the right cloud service provider who can ensure an unspoken contract: user trust.

 At SimplyClouds, our reputation is backed by hundreds of satisfied clients who have trusted us with their business IT. We make powerful cloud solutions easy and affordable, and have SLAs to back up our claim. If you have any questions about cloud technology, we’ll be happy to answer them. Just give us a call.