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The hybrid cloud concept is based on the notion of making public and private clouds co-exist, thereby allowing companies to maximize the benefits of both public and private cloud environments. In hybrid cloud computing, IT resources are deployed and managed through a combination of on-premise and third-party cloud computing services.

Notably, hybrid cloud has been one of the most-talked about concept within the cloud computing space. According to an insight from GlobalData, during the third quarter of 2019, hybrid cloud garnered the highest percentage of Twitter mentions in discussions among cloud computing experts. Notably, this was closely followed by multi cloud.

According to IDC, the key features of hybrid cloud are protection, security and compliance, integration and orchestration, and data location optimization.

Speaking of security, hybrid cloud allows organization to choose dedicated servers or network devices that can facilitate isolation of data and ensure better control over critical operations. Although the hybrid cloud isnt faster than a multi-cloud or a public cloud environment, it does however enable network optimization to minimize latency.

Scalability is another advantage as hybrid computing makes use of the public cloud platform. Notably, public cloud resources facilitate development of new applications and can run powerful analytics programs that are beyond the capacity of small organizations.

Hybrid Cloud to Gain Momentum in 2020

Per a TechTarget report, although hybrid cloud has been a popular trend in the cloud computing in the past few years, 2019 witnessed key changes as to how the platform was marketed and sold.

Moreover, hybrid computing is likely to be widely adopted during 2020 as interoperability between cloud systems and private networks take center stage. Further, widespread adoption of AI, ML, IoT and need of high capacity storage is driving the demand of hybrid cloud.

In fact, according to IDC, more than 90% of enterprise IT organizations will commit to multi-cloud architectures. Moreover, 70% of enterprises will integrate their public and private clouds by adhering to hybrid and multi-cloud management technologies, tools, and processes by 2022.

Focus on Top Hybrid Cloud Players

Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) is a dominant hybrid cloud solutions provider. The company is a pioneer in delivering a consistent private cloud experience using Azure Stack, enabling enterprises to build innovative hybrid cloud solutions. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

In November, Microsoft introduced Azure Arc, which extends Azure management tools to on-premises and cloud platforms beyond Azure.

Microsoft currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) and a long-term earnings growth rate of 11.9%.

Intel (INTC - Free Report) is investing heavily in hybrid cloud development to ease workloads for client companies. The company is working closely with other industry leaders to accelerate cloud computing solutions and innovations such as Xeon Scalable processor platform, Optane technology, and Omni-Path Architecture.

The company is also extending virtualization from individual servers to the data centers via SDI, enabling a critical on-ramp for scalable hybrid clouds.

Intel currently has a Zacks Rank # 2 and a long-term earnings growth rate of 7.5%.

Year-to-Date Performance

Intel and Alphabets (GOOGL - Free Report) Google Cloud deal in April 2019, in a bid to accelerate deployment of applications on hybrid cloud and on-premise infrastructure, is worth noting. The deal has enabled the development of Anthos reference design by utilizing Intels 2nd-Generation XeonScalable processors.

Markedly, Alphabets acquisition of CloudSimple in November 2019, is another significant step toward bolstering Google Clouds presence in the hybrid space. The company currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and a long-term earnings growth rate of 16.7%.

Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) has been a crucial hybrid cloud solutions provider in some way or the other, since the inception of AWS. Markedly, AWS recently made Outposts, a managed service that puts AWS-built server racks integrated with AWS software inside customer data centers, generally available.

Amazon currently has a Zacks Rank #3 and a long-term earnings growth rate of 16.7%.

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM - Free Report) has also been taking steps to adhere to the hybrid-shift. Through its Cloud Pak for Security feature, IBM is facilitating locking of data speed and applications across multiple private and public clouds and on-premises locations.

Markedly, the companys acquisition of Red Hat in 2018 is considered by some industry experts to be an important move considering its strategy to shift to hybrid cloud. In fact, IBMs Cloud Paks are bundles of Red Hats Kubernetes-based OpenShift container platform along with Red Hat Linux and a variety of connecting technologies.

IBM currently has a Zacks Rank #3 and a long-term earnings growth rate of 5%.

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Hybrid Cloud to Gain Traction in 2020: 5 Stocks in Focus - Zacks.com