Hybrid cloud is an infrastructure model that combines your own resources —a data center, servers on premises— with public cloud services, connected and managed as one integrated environment. Instead of choosing between “everything in my data center” or “everything in the cloud,” the company decides where each workload runs based on its requirements.
How does a hybrid cloud work?
For two such different environments to operate as one, a well-designed hybrid architecture solves three planes:
- Connectivity: a reliable, secure link between your premises and the cloud — from an encrypted VPN to a dedicated private connection. The entire experience depends on its latency and availability.
- Identity and security: a single model for access, permissions, and auditing that covers both environments. Users and applications authenticate the same way, wherever they run.
- Operations: common tools for deployment, observability, and governance, so the team manages both worlds with the same practices instead of duplicating effort.
When these three planes are solved, the physical location of each workload becomes an architecture decision — and stops being a limitation.
Hybrid cloud vs multicloud
They are often mentioned together, but they answer different questions:
| Hybrid cloud | Multicloud | |
|---|---|---|
| What it combines | Own infrastructure + public cloud | Two or more public clouds |
| Question it answers | What stays on premises and what moves to the cloud? | Which provider do I use for each service? |
| Typical motivation | Gradual migration, latency, data requirements | Provider diversification |
| Main complexity | Integrating two different operating models | Multiplying tools and skills per provider |
A company can be both at once, though each dimension adds real operational complexity. The right question is always the same: what concrete business requirement justifies each piece?
When does hybrid cloud make sense?
Hybrid is the right answer when there is a concrete requirement behind it:
- Gradual migration: moving everything at once concentrates risk. A hybrid architecture lets you migrate in stages — already-migrated workloads operate in the cloud while the rest stays in the data center, with both worlds connected.
- Very low latency: industrial processes, trading, or plant-floor systems that need millisecond responses close to the physical operation.
- Data location requirements: regulatory frameworks that require certain data to remain in a specific location, while the rest of the application leverages the cloud.
- Legacy systems with physical dependencies: applications coupled to specific hardware that are better modernized first and moved later.
The most frequent pattern among Peruvian companies is the first: hybrid as a stage of a planned migration, where the share running in the cloud grows wave by wave until the data center is reserved for what truly needs it.
Hybrid cloud on AWS
AWS has spent years extending its services into customers’ premises, which lets you build hybrid with the same tools and APIs as the cloud:
- AWS Outposts: physical AWS infrastructure installed in your own data center. The same AWS services, APIs, and tools, running on your premises — ideal for low latency or data that must stay on site.
- AWS Direct Connect: a private, dedicated network connection between your premises and AWS, with consistent latency and more bandwidth than an internet link.
- AWS Site-to-Site VPN: an encrypted connection over the internet between your network and AWS — the usual starting point before a dedicated link.
- Amazon ECS Anywhere and EKS Anywhere: run containers on your own servers with the cloud’s operating model — including Kubernetes. ECS Anywhere is orchestrated from the AWS control plane; EKS Anywhere creates Kubernetes clusters on site with the same tooling as Amazon EKS.
This family of services has a strategic implication: the operating model unifies with the cloud’s. The team learns a single way of working, and each workload runs where its requirements demand.
Hybrid is designed; the destination is decided per workload
There is an important difference between a designed hybrid cloud and an inherited one. The inherited kind is the result of migrating halfway: some things in the cloud, others in the data center, with improvised connections and two duplicated operating models. The designed kind starts from an explicit decision per workload: what moves, what stays, why, and until when.
That per-workload decision is the heart of a well-crafted cloud strategy. And when the plan calls for moving workloads to the cloud, a structured migration with the AWS MAP methodology moves them in stages, with risk controlled at every wave.
At Caleidos we support both moments: defining the map —what runs where and why— and executing the move. Shall we talk? Reach us at Contact or browse our success stories.
