A Different Kind of Hybrid Cloud Computing

When most people talk about hybrid cloud computing, they are talking about the integration of on-premise IT assets and a third-party cloud computing service.

But the folks at Rackspace say that there is a lot more nuance when it comes to hybrid cloud computing. Specially, they note that the integration of cloud computing services and a managed hosting environment is another equally valid form of hybrid cloud computing.

Toby Owen, senior product manager of hybrid cloud at Rackspace, says that in the not-too-distant future it will be pretty commonplace for IT organizations to integrate application workloads across shared public cloud infrastructure and applications running on dedicated hosting equipment. The dedicated infrastructure, he notes, will most likely to be applied to mission-critical production applications, while the shared infrastructure on a public cloud is relied on for other classes of applications.

While there’s nothing radical about this concept, it will serve to make things cloudier as IT organizations continue to evaluate their application delivery options, especially when you consider all the variations in pricing schemes between cloud computing and managed hosting services.

At the end of the day, the good news is that when it comes to delivering IT services, customers have more options than ever before. The bad news is that all those choices mean a lot more work when it comes to figuring out what type of application workload should optimally run where.