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Above: Computing services hosted on the cloud. (Derived from Bloomberg Intelligence: Microsoft Leads Legacy Software Companies in Shift to Cloud)

Cloud vs. Hybrid Cloud: What’s the Difference?

In a nutshell, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services, such as servers, databases, storage, networking, software, analytics, among others, over the internet (“the cloud”). Cloud computing gives retailers the ability to increase or decrease capacity and to match usage needs across the entire organization, from P.O.S. to E.R.P and all the applications, partners, and services in between, that are connected to this environment.

According to Microsoft, “A hybrid cloud is a computing environment that combines a public cloud and a private cloud by allowing data and applications to be shared between them. When computing and processing demand fluctuates, hybrid cloud computing gives businesses the ability to seamlessly scale their on-premises infrastructure up to the public cloud to handle any overflow – without giving third-party datacenters access to the entirety of their data. Organizations gain the flexibility and computing power of the public cloud for basic and non-sensitive computing tasks, while keeping business-critical applications and data on-premises, safely behind a company firewall.”

The end-goal of the cloud is to make it possible for you to focus on opportunities instead of technologies.

The cloud provides the new, fluid, delivery model for I.T., where I.T. can focus on whatever it takes to deliver better customer & employee experiences — to drive business growth — rather than just managing the technologies that the company uses.

At ArcherPoint Retail, we believe that you should be able to operate — and innovate — at the scale of customer change.  We recommend starting with a Hybrid Cloud strategy so you can continue to benefit from your existing technology investments throughout your retail transformation.

‘Hybrid’ your I.T. set-up, the way you need it to be.

Public, Private, Hybrid: Customize your business environment for flexible storage, computing, and deployment of innovations so it facilitates your future, not your past. This empowers you to be able to provide more services, more quickly, at less cost.

From capital expenses, to speed of networks & computing, to productivity gains (for I.T. staff all the way through to retail operations), to business continuity, and finally, to economies of scale during business expansion; these are where retailers are seeing great improvements after investing in a hybrid cloud strategy.

Everyone wants to reduce the total cost of ownership; This is how you can really make it happen.