In a world that’s more digital-first than ever, finding the best way to grow your business, scale, and keep pace with the competition is now more important than ever. Creating a strong technological foundation that’s flexible, cost-effective, and secure is key, especially for small and medium software companies that work on limited resources, but need to be highly agile.
Cloud computing is the natural solution, but the choice doesn’t have to be between private and public clouds – hybrid cloud claims to combine the best of both worlds. But is hybrid cloud really the future for midsized software companies?
Before we get to the answer, let’s look in more detail at private cloud vs hybrid cloud, including hybrid cloud computing, its benefits and challenges, and the best pick for mid-sized software companies.
What is Hybrid Cloud Computing?
Hybrid cloud computing consists of a unified cloud strategy, combining the strengths and affordability of public cloud services with the customisation and control offered by private cloud vendors.
This powerful blend allows small and medium businesses to match their cloud preferences with their unique business needs. Essentially, your business will have flexibility in managing your IT resources along with the ability to move data and applications between cloud environments as and when needed.
How Hybrid Cloud Hosting Helps Mid-Sized Software Companies
Here are the key reasons why mid-sized software companies prefer to use hybrid cloud hosting:
Flexibility and Scalability
Hybrid cloud solutions can scale resources based on demand, helping midsized software companies handle peak workloads without over-provisioning or wasting cloud resources during lean times.
Cost Efficiency
Hybrid clouds let you optimise your resource usage with a pay-as-you-go model, so you can cut down on capital expenditure. This payment model is more financially efficient for small and mid-sized companies with limited IT budgets.
Enhance Innovation
Hybrid clouds let your software company accelerate innovation cycles by supporting rapid deployment of new applications and services and modern development practices like DevOps and continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD).
Disaster Recovery and Improved Business Continuity
You can bolster your business continuity with hybrid cloud hosting, with reliable backup and recovery services supported by the security of the private cloud. As a result, you’ll be able to minimise disruptions from unplanned downtime and build greater IT resilience.
Security and Compliance
Hybrid clouds for software organisations offer comprehensive security measures that cover both on-premises and cloud environments. This allows your growing software business to meet industry-specific regulatory requirements while safeguarding sensitive business data.
Challenges in Adopting Hybrid Cloud
While there are multiple advantages of moving to a hybrid cloud, it also has its own share of challenges. These include:
Complexity
Hybrid clouds can be complex to set up and manage, as they require integration between different cloud environments, which often need specialised technical expertise and resources.
Cost
You may find that it’s more expensive to implement and manage hybrid clouds compared to either private or public clouds alone because of the additional hardware, software, and networking infrastructure. You’re also charged egress fees by your friendly public cloud provider.
Security
These clouds can be more susceptible to data breaches or cyberattacks as there’s a lack of standardisation and consistency between the different cloud environments.
Data Governance
Managing data across different cloud environments can be challenging, especially when you’re trying to ensure that your company is in compliance with the UK’s GDPR.
Network Latency
The communication between different cloud environments can affect network latency and lead to performance issues.
Integration Challenges
Integrating two different cloud environments can be tricky, especially when you’re trying to ensure compatibility between different applications and devices.
Vendor Lock-In
Working with multiple cloud providers also means your organisation is entering a vendor lock-in, limiting your ability to switch providers.
Private Cloud vs Hybrid Cloud
So, those are the benefits and challenges associated with hybrid cloud computing – but what exactly makes this solution different from private cloud?
Here are the main factors that determine the difference between a private cloud vs a hybrid cloud:
Resources
In terms of resources, private cloud vendors dedicate cloud infrastructure to your organisation and yours alone. Hybrid cloud providers offer you a blend of public and private cloud hosting, depending on your requirements.
Tenancy
Looking at tenancy, private cloud vendors focus on managing and storing the data of only your organisation and don’t share it with other organisations, like in public clouds. In hybrid cloud hosting, data is stored with other organisations in the public cloud, but security is in the private cloud.
Plus, private clouds aren’t limited to on-premise deployments. Private cloud vendors provide cloud infrastructure in rented, vendor-owned data centres located off-premises.
Investment
In terms of costs, private cloud vendors tend to charge more for the dedicated and exclusive resources with various pricing models. Hybrid clouds can include a mix of pay-as-you-go pricing and private cloud fixed pricing, and may seem more cost-effective than private clouds.
Is Hybrid Cloud the Future for Mid-Sized Software Companies?
Considering these differences, hybrid cloud is a good option for mid-size software companies, but you’ll want to choose a managed service provider that can monitor both cloud environments closely and focus on seamless connectivity, data portability, and performance.
Why BlackBox’s Managed Private Cloud is Uniquely “Hybrid”
At BlackBox Hosting, we’ve redefined hybrid cloud by combining the performance and security of our managed private cloud with the flexibility of public cloud services — all while keeping costs under control.
- Run your compute-intensive, latency-sensitive, or business-critical workloads on our high-performance private cloud, built for speed and resilience. Meanwhile, offload non-critical or variable workloads to cost-effective public cloud platforms like AWS or Azure — all seamlessly connected.
- Through our dedicated express routes and private fiber connectivity, we offer direct, low-latency links between your BlackBox environment and public cloud services. That means no bottlenecks, better security, and true hybrid flexibility — all managed under one roof.
- The result? You get the best of both worlds: private cloud reliability and speed where it matters, public cloud scalability where it makes sense — without overpaying for either.
Ready to look beyond hybrid cloud and experience the scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of our hybrid-like managed private cloud solutions? Call us on +44(0)203 740 7840l to partner with us today and leverage the power of our cloud solutions.
