Hybrid cloud management combines the management of the hardware resources of multiple public clouds with private cloud in an on-premises data center. Many companies have data security policies that prohibit certain information or software code to be remotely-hosted on third-party hardware. Although the public cloud paradigm effectively challenges the classic view of a private corporate data center, hybrid cloud preserves the functionality of legacy equipment while allowing companies to extend capacity by introducing public cloud resources. Many enterprise hybrid cloud networks now include support for SaaS/PaaS applications fundamental to daily workflow and productivity.

Hybrid cloud management makes efficient use of public cloud hardware resources in data center administration or web hosting. Hybrid cloud management permits IT professionals in complex business organizations to procure the lowest costs on hardware resources through competitive bidding across platforms. This avoids vendor lock-in that can lead to higher pricing and waste.

Hybrid cloud management can also be used to deploy web and mobile applications at scale using containers. An example of hybrid cloud architecture would be LAMP software running on the AWS EC2 platform with support for databases in a private cloud, on-premises data center that also incorporated Serverless or ASP.Net processing from other providers. Hybrid cloud management software is based on software-defined networking (SDN) and routing between virtual machines across multiple data center locations. This is required for data security, continual uptime guarantees, and continuity of business services.

Hybrid cloud management software can be categorized primarily by proprietary vs. open source licensing. The industry leaders in hybrid cloud management are Microsoft and VMware. Both companies produce complete data center management platforms that can be used to architect across public and private cloud hardware.

Open source solutions are primarily based around OpenStack, CloudStack, and Apache Mesosphere. Ubuntu, Red Hat, and SUSE all produce custom Linux distributions with OpenStack support for enterprise data centers that is the most advanced in the industry. Companies like Mirantis, Nutanix, NetApp, and Cloud Foundry challenge the market share of Microsoft and VMware. Other IT majors like IBM, HP, Fujitsu, and EMC have complete data center management software suites developed for enterprise scale applications that support the Fortune 500 corporations and government institutions.