When it comes to maintaining a reliable pipeline, hybrid cloud deployment and multi-cloud approaches are becoming the norm. Hybrid deployment strategies combine on-premises servers with one or more public cloud services (think Azure, AWS, GCP), making workflows more secure and compliant (private data can remain on-premise), cost-efficient (high-cost cloud space is reduced), and overall more nimble and scalable. Enterprises often move to a multi-cloud deployment model, combining on-premises servers and multiple third-party cloud services.
According to a recent report by Gartner, 90% of organizations are expected to adopt hybrid cloud through 2027. Still, cross-cloud deployments bring new challenges: fragmented environments, inconsistent tooling, and complex release pipelines are only a few of the complications posed by such layered infrastructures.
In this article, we will explore hybrid and multi-cloud deployment concepts and discuss the challenges of cross-cloud deployments. We will also see how DeployHQ supports hybrid cloud environments and how to manage deployments across different cloud providers.
Understanding hybrid and multi-cloud deployment
Hybrid cloud vs. multi-cloud vs. cross-cloud
Hybrid cloud deployment and multi-cloud deployment are two key terms that are often (and erroneously) used interchangeably. While these two approaches overlap, they are substantially different.
Hybrid cloud deployments combine two or more different types of cloud environments. Typically, this includes on-premises infrastructure (either private cloud or traditional data center) and one or more public cloud services. The cloud “mixing” is not random: there’s a focus on integration and workload orchestration. A typical use case would involve sensitive workloads stored privately, combined with scalable web applications hosted on third-party provider clouds.
On the other hand, multi-cloud deployment involves multiple cloud providers at the same time. In this strategy, these clouds tend to all be public, and it’s aimed at avoiding vendor-lock-in. This feature is prioritized over other advantages considered in hybrid approaches (security, compliance, flexibility). For instance, an e-commerce platform may choose to distribute traffic across AWS and Azure services.
Ultimately, cross-cloud deployments are how workloads are deployed and orchestrated across clouds. This is more likely to happen in a hybrid approach, where an application actively spans both private and public clouds, with workloads moving or sharing data between them. In multi-cloud, workloads are often separate by nature, so cross-cloud deployments are less common unless you integrate workloads.
Challenges of cross-cloud deployments
Cross-cloud deployment is the practice of executing a workload or application concurrently across several cloud providers, frequently coordinating and exchanging data. This practice is not without its hurdles.
Different clouds have separate dashboards, as well as logging and monitoring tools, which create a fragmented ecosystem. The tooling, too, can be inconsistent: CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and SDKs may vary across providers. Security and compliance may also be affected, as each provider has different policies. Because of this, release pipelines become complex and bottlenecks emerge: multiple clouds mean more steps, which in turn mean a higher chance of errors.
Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments supporting cross-cloud deployments are central to modern enterprise architecture design, but they require efficient deployment strategies to make data and workload orchestration across clouds as smooth as possible.
Deployment strategies for hybrid cloud
Fortunately, establishing an efficient hybrid cloud deployment pipeline is not rocket science. Here are some steps you can take to ensure your hybrid cloud deployment strategy is solid:
- Design architecture and explore your options: It’s important to have a well-established design before you go online. Be as detailed as possible, and make sure the cloud providers you pick are those who serve you and your project best. Map your future workloads to the best-suited cloud for the job at every turn.
- Cloud integration tools: Hybrid cloud environments need several tools to be successful and functional: think APIs and hybrid orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.
- Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines: These let you keep an eye on every step of your system, automate deployments, and use infrastructure-as-code frameworks to manage resources consistently.
- Foster observability with unified dashboard: Speaking of monitoring, unified dashboards can be an efficient solution to fragmentation, allowing you to have logs, error alerts, and other notifications and triggers all in one place.
- Version control and rollback strategies: Systems such as Git help you ensure that any production error is moments away from a rollback.
How DeployHQ supports hybrid cloud deployments
DeployHQ is a deployment automation platform that supports smooth releases when you are dealing with hybrid cloud and cross-cloud deployments. It combats the challenges of orchestrating and handling different workloads and data centers by offering a centralized hub for deployment management.
Here is how DeployHQ can help you streamline hybrid cloud ecosystems.
Centralized dashboard for multi-cloud management
It offers a unified dashboard to manage deployments across multiple targets, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and custom servers (such as on-premises or private cloud). With this centralized view, teams can easily monitor all servers and stages of their deployments from one interface, eliminating the need to switch between multiple dashboards. Visual logs provide clear information about the progress and status of each release.
Automated deployment pipelines
DeployHQ integrates with repositories hosted on GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, and can tie into CI/CD workflows via webhooks and pipelines. This way, developers can push updates that DeployHQ rolls out to multiple targets or environments in sequence or parallel (using server groups). Automatic rollbacks and real-time notifications allow teams to react immediately to failed deployments or other customizable triggers.
Consistency and config management
One of the challenges of hybrid cloud deployment is making sure that applications behave consistently. DeployHQ takes care of this by managing server group variables and configuration settings across all clouds. This environment configuration management ensures that releases perform well across both public cloud services and private infrastructure.
Security advantages
DeployHQ’s observability-first approach also strengthens security and compliance in hybrid cloud ecosystems. Detailed logs of all deployment activity provide a full audit trail, and the platform supports approval workflows for sensitive environments, so you can be sure that critical deployments meet compliance and governance standards. Together, these features help organizations maintain secure hybrid cloud deployments with operational complexity reduced to a minimum.
Conclusion
Hybrid cloud deployment can enable organizations to achieve optimized performance and flexibility while maintaining security and compliance for sensitive workloads. Although cross-cloud environments can introduce complexity to your projects, effective deployment strategies and the right tools can simplify orchestration. DeployHQ supports hybrid and multi-cloud workflows by centralizing deployment management and automating pipelines, supporting your teams so that they can release updates safely across multiple clouds.
To start simplifying your hybrid cloud deployments and improve consistency across environments, explore DeployHQ today. Check out our pricing here.
FAQs
What is hybrid cloud deployment, and how does it differ from multi-cloud deployment?
Hybrid cloud deployment combines on-premises servers (private cloud) with one or more public cloud services like AWS, Azure, or GCP. Multi-cloud deployment involves using multiple public cloud providers without necessarily including on-premises infrastructure. Hybrid approaches tend to focus on integration and workload orchestration, while multi-cloud emphasizes using multiple providers and avoiding vendor lock-in.
Why is hybrid cloud deployment important for enterprises?
With hybrid cloud deployment, companies can find a good balance between cost, security, and scalability power. Scalable applications can be deployed in the public cloud, while sensitive workloads can be maintained on private infrastructure.
What are the main challenges of cross-cloud deployments?
Cross-cloud deployments can create fragmented environments, inconsistent tooling, and complex release pipelines that become problematic. Each cloud provider has different dashboards, CI/CD integrations, and security policies to stick to, which makes orchestration and monitoring more challenging.
How does DeployHQ simplify hybrid cloud deployments?
DeployHQ centralizes deployment management across multiple cloud providers, integrates with CI/CD tools like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, and automates pipelines. Automatic rollbacks, real-time notifications, and centralized logs are also helpful feature that help you reduce operational complexity.