Mixed or Hybrid Clouds

Definition: A cloud environment in which external services are leveraged to extend or supplement the internal cloud – simply put, a mixture of both private and public cloud

"Hybrid" is a term used to define any environment where a combination of public and private cloud computing is used. For example, a company may have an internal cloud deployed that allows them to share a pool of physical and virtual resources over a global network – but this company may also on occasion extend these capabilities (at peak processing times, for example) by renting time in a 3^rd part cloud service such as Amazon EC2. This is a mixed or hybrid cloud environment.

Benefits of Hybrid Clouds include:

• Achieve a more flexible computing environment
• Reduce computing costs
• Achieve a more flexible computing environment
• Map capacity to demand (no under- or over-provisioning – buy only what's needed)
• Automate manual provisioning tasks
• Decouple applications from infrastructure constraints
• Ensure capacity is there when you need it