By MAXfocus Guest Blog

As recently as just a few years ago, many IT professionals and business owners were skeptical about moving to cloud services. Now the tide has turned–the industry is witnessing solid support for a move to the cloud, driven significantly by the "as a service" focus of all the big-name IT vendors.

Having said that, focusing on cloud solutions as a "one-size-fits-all" approach isn't necessarily the right strategy–however fashionable it may have become.

There are still many scenarios in which considering a hybrid approach (or perhaps, in some cases, a traditional "on premise" approach) can make more sense. In this article, we discuss three of the reasons why.

1. "Cloud" can sometimes mean "slow."

If you move all of an established company's files to the cloud when they're used to an on-premise infrastructure, the users may feel they've taken a major step backward in terms of performance.

This is especially relevant to business sectors that work with large data files, particularly the creative industry. Even though the likes of Adobe are now moving to an as-a-service model, that doesn't mean designers are suddenly going to be prepared to wait four times longer to open and save their work. On this basis, a hybrid approach to file storage may be required, especially when you consider the fact that not every business has access to particularly fast broadband.

2. The cloud can still go down.

Regardless of the service-level agreements (SLAs) in place, cloud services aren't immune to outages. For this reason, it's important to consider the exact business impact of a potential service failure, and what kind of hybrid system could provide some continuity if and when the worst happens.

When thinking about this, it's important to remember that an "outage" could mean a temporary loss of Internet connectivity, as well as the loss of a cloud service.

3. Disaster recovery should begin at home.

There are plenty of good reasons for turning to the cloud for backup and disaster recovery provision, and they go far beyond the basic fact that data restoration can take place regardless of physical location. However, there is nothing to say that a national disaster won't wipe out a data center.

To mitigate this, you should first ensure that your client data is mirrored in far-apart locations. Better still, have a plan that provides you with a locally based restoration option in tandem.

IT professionals who continue to stubbornly stick to their ways and ignore what the cloud has to offer are, quite rightly, now referred to as "old school" and "old fashioned," but that doesn't mean they should blindly follow others to the cloud.

In every case, it's a better strategy to view cloud services as just one of a selection of tools, and design each infrastructure on a case-by-case basis. A completely empty server room should not be seen as the objective.

Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of The VAR Guy's annual platinum sponsorship.