How Hybrid Cloud can Help Make Better Beer

Here at Cima Solutions Group, we spend a lot of time thinking about how technology can make the world a better place to live in. Sometimes that means big things, like saving lives through better medical practices or improving lives through innovative educational concepts. However, every now and then, there comes a time to set aside those big goals (important as they may be) to focus on something fun.

Here's another thing you might not know about the people at Cima: we love craft beer! That's why we started our TechUntapped series of events, to bring together our friends from the IT world to enjoy some great locally crafted beer. When we think about fun things that could be made even better by technology, beer was one of the first things to come to mind. For us, it doesn't get much more fun than great beer enjoyed with great people. However, we also realize that craft breweries are businesses too, and like all businesses, they have processes that could be improved by the application of technology.

So, in the spirit of having fun with great beer, we now present our newest series of blog posts: How enterprise technology can help make better beer. We'll look at different technologies from across the enterprise, while also touching on offerings from different Cima partners, all of who are leading technology vendors in their respective spaces.

To start things off, we'll be taking a look at hybrid cloud.

About hybrid cloud for business

To put things simply, a hybrid cloud is any cloud computing platform that's made up of more than one variety of cloud system. For practical purposes, when most people talk about hybrid cloud, they are thinking of a combination of public cloud and private cloud systems. This means that different workflows might be managed by an external cloud services provider, or managed on an in-house, behind-the-firewall cloud system. The ideal hybrid cloud system provides maximum portability of workloads, so that those workloads can move back and forth between the two pieces of the hybrid cloud environment as the needs of the business grow and evolve.

While almost any business can benefit greatly through the proper application of hybrid cloud, craft brewing companies do have a lot of unique characteristics that leave them in an especially good position to benefit from what hybrid cloud has to offer.

The unique aspects of the craft brewing company, and how hybrid cloud helps address them

To start with, many craft brewers are small, and looking for ways to maintain their independence. A hybrid cloud environment can help them get all of the data center resources they need without having to invest a lot of money in developing their own IT infrastructure. Afterall, we want them investing into making the world of beer better, not IT infrastructure right?

The public cloud aspect of the hybrid scenario allows them to start small, pay for IT resources as they go, and then scale up whenever sales and distributiomn pick up enough to justify doing so. At the same time, the private cloud allows a craft brewer to keep all of their most important data in house, where they can take special steps toward keeping that data safe. While security in public cloud offerings such as SoftLayer are often more secure than on-premises infrastructure, some folks are just uncomfortable with their trade secrets leaving the brewery. This solution allows the brewer to keep things such as proprietary beer recipes—the things that really make them different from all the other brewers out there—completely safe and within their own control.

We're just getting started with our discussion of how hybrid cloud can lead to better beer, so make sure to check back for more on this enjoyable topic soon. In the meantime, check out our TechUntapped series of events. If you're located in the Dallas/Forth Area area or in Austin, we'd love to see you out at one of our upcoming events. You won't find any boring presentations or sales pitches at these events. Instead, it's all about enjoying great beer with great people. We look forward to seeing you at an event soon.

Find a TechUntapped event near me!

Cheers,

John