The cloud allows businesses to take a more hands-off approach to managing their IT resources. And the hybrid cloud is rapidly becoming the most popular option in this category, especially for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Hybrid clouds are a combination of private and public clouds.

Microsoft isn’t always the first company that pops into mind when talking about virtualization, but it does offer one of the best solutions in the industry. In an ongoing effort to compete with companies like VMWare and Amazon Web Services, Microsoft has released a massive upgrade for its virtualization platform -- and it’s totally free!
Azure: Microsoft’s virtualization platform
As a full-service cloud solution, Azure is a secure and flexible data center that businesses of all sizes can benefit from.

Cloud technology has seen continuous adoption in 2017. In fact, business owners are starting to embrace hybrid cloud so much that 2020 is expected to be the year when combined private and public cloud spending will exceed traditional data centers. But until then, here are five hybrid cloud predictions for 2018.

Clearer strategies

Many infrastructure as a service (IaaS) public cloud vendors have spent 2017 refining their hybrid cloud strategy.

Here on earth, clouds are relatively simple phenomena: visible masses of water vapor making their way across the sky. But in the world of IT, “the cloud” is a bit more complex, referring to technology that allows businesses to take a more hands-off approach to managing their IT resources.