More and more companies these days are hosting their business components on the cloud, as it has proven to be reliable, cost-effective, and secure. However, many small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) experience certain operational pains on either the public or private cloud.

While small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are increasingly adopting cloud solutions, certain concerns such as security and regulatory compliance have made it challenging for some to migrate all of their resources to public cloud servers. The solution is to adopt a hybrid cloud instead.

When it comes to the cloud, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) may be compelled to choose either a private or a public cloud infrastructure. But there's a third option, and it's called the hybrid cloud.

Hybrid clouds are a combination of private and public clouds.

One of the greatest things about cloud-based virtualization is that updates are rolled out by providers and don’t require end users to do anything. In the latest example of this, Microsoft just drastically increased the speed of its virtual machines for almost everyone using its platform.

Hybrid cloud got off to a slow start when compared to public cloud. However, as more business owners realize the unique flexibility it has to offer, the future of hybrid cloud is now brighter than ever. To that end, here’s what you can expect from hybrid cloud this year.

Most people will tell you that clouds can be only be found in the sky. But in the IT world, clouds are more grounded: the latest of which are a combination of private clouds and public clouds, appropriately dubbed “hybrid clouds.” This innovation allows SMBs to have the best of both cloud worlds while minimizing IT expenses, optimizing scalability, and improving security.