Database. Those are designed for the organizations that use Microsoft SQL Servers [22]. Unlike AWS, Microsoft offers an actual Site Recovery service, Archive Storage, and Backup service.
1.3.3.2 Google Cloud Anthos Storage
Unified storage and more: GCP has enormous level of storage services. The unified object storage service is cloud storage. It also provides persistent disk storage. It also offers a Transfer Appliance which is a similar kind of AWS Snowball and online transfer services.
SQL and NoSQL: GCP possesses the SQL-based Cloud and also provides a relational database known as Cloud Spanner. Cloud Spanner is designed for critical and complex workloads. It also provides NoSQL. They are Cloud Datastore and Cloud Bigtable. No backup services and archive services are provided.
Table 1.3 Comparison between VMware Microsoft Amazon AWS.
| Category | VMware | Microsoft | Amazon AWS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery mode | Very simple | Easy to follow | Very easy |
| Ability to apply the technology | Cost-effective virtualization solution, manage to virtualize the X86 computer architecture | Estimated cost was around $4.99 per month [19] | Very affordable, $32 to $255 per month [19] |
| Integration with other applications | It is an Edge PC Virtualization, Workstation 12.5 Pro, Fusion 8.5 - Windows on Mac®, Workstation 12 Player- streamlined PC Virtualization for Business | Computes engine for networking, virtual machines, SQL databases, storage, containers, security, API integration, etc. | Web application, website and database storefront. |
| Security | Secure virtual box is possible to create, manages files, using SSL, SSH, etc. | Reliable | Tight |
| Operating system and mobile compatibility | Many operating systems like Windows, Linux and Mac, etc. | Windows 8 and Windows 10 | Both Linux and Windows. Able to compute, storage, database, networking, and content delivery. |
| Upgrades | On demand Products available at less price. | Able to run updates. | |
| Service-level agreements | Azure Cloud provides Container services speedily and in simple way. | Easy | |
| Training/support | Auditing, monitoring/logging, storage creating | ||
| Scalability and vendor reliability | Vendor is dependable and revenue growth is stable for Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) and database usage [19] |
1.3.4 Pricing
Pricing is one of the challenging scenarios among these three hybrid cloud providers. Table 1.3 lists all the pricing related issues involved here.
AWS Outpost: The pricing of Amazon is very inscrutable. Though it offers a cost calculator, many variables involved here make it very difficult for proper estimation [23].
Azure Stack: Microsoft Azure is also complicated software. The licensing options and their uses are applicable in specified case discounts. The pricing structure is also difficult to understand of this provider.
Google Cloud Anthos: The pricing of Google is different. It offers are customer-friendly. So, it provides the least price than that of the other providers. It also provides huge discounts and flexible contracts to fulfill the purpose of customers.
1.4 Hybrid Cloud in Education
Apart from business sectors, educational institutions can also take help of the hybrid cloud for extending their on-premise legacy system [31]. They can build some application on to the public cloud to student data management, resource management, employee data management, etc., at ease releasing their IT team to do some other jobs. An example can be some database of the student can be kept on-premise server while front end web applications for the students can run onto the public cloud. Based on specific performance or regularity needs, they can also move workloads dynamically between public and private cloud may be for the specific period of time. Student and staff and institutional data are very sensitive; they can be kept secure behind with their own firewall and antivirus. Whereas with the help of the public cloud, several attractive features can be provided, like job getting opportunity trend, research work prospect, and study and lecture material of renowned professors, virtual labs, etc., without installing any additional hardware or software solution system. Thus, by using “Build the base rent the spike” deployment model, they can save the money. But security policies have to be strict. Applications and infrastructures should be guided by different security policies. Edge systems like email server, web server, and routers should be kept protected as they can communicate with inside and outside the organization.
1.5 Significance of Hybrid Cloud Post-Pandemic
Adaptation of cloud-based services has grown tremendously after pandemic. Due to COVID-19, every sector faces losses. Rapid shifting of business into online mode is the current requirement. Organizations that have legacy infrastructure on premise cannot shift to public cloud in a day and security also is a matter of consideration. As a result, hybrid cloud is the most preferred solution.
In COVID-19 pandemic situation, the world is compelled to move for remote work. So, the video conferencing is tremendously increasing and all the related data moves to the cloud. Enterprises are considering the cloud as a digital transformation engine and as well. As the work is done remotely, the jobs are majorly done in cloud infrastructure. Collaboration with Microsoft Teams or Google Meet becomes very strong with the companies in broader cloud ecosystem [17].
Hybrid cloud has an aspiration to achieve target for companies. Companies are well aware about their vendors and they want to transfer their applications to clouds. The multi-cloud conception is yielded among different vendors. The vendor plug with many clouds like VMware or Red Hat [17, 18].
Customers are getting tackier to the cloud service providers as more and more corporate data are stored on the cloud. It is known that cloud computing vendors are trying enterprises to use their platforms to accumulate data from everywhere.
IoT, AI, edge computing, and data analytics will make difference among the
