What is a “hybrid” deployment and why should you care?
2020 marked a year of dramatic change and development in the business world. Organizations have had to introduce new systems and tools to accommodate a tectonic shift in the way that people collaborate and execute company objectives while working remotely.
Tools like Nintex Workflow Cloud® and Nintex Promapp® have been able to help businesses support this rapid digital transformation by enabling them to quickly develop processes and solutions in the cloud, where they can be accessed from anywhere. But legacy on-premises environments are still a necessity in many businesses.
In fact, some of the most business-critical applications are still required to run on-premises due to either security policies or the complexity of the application. The need to keep some applications on-premises and shift others to the cloud can make it difficult for employees to know which system to use.
Users may need to access an on-premises tool or database to find a piece of information which is needed in the new cloud-based process. These mental gymnastics can slow down productivity and frustrate both remote and office-based employees alike.
This is where “hybrid” deployment comes in.
What is a hybrid deployment?
Thankfully, when building with the Nintex Platform, organizations can help alleviate this burden on the workforce by enabling “hybrid” solutions that can bridge the gap between the modern cloud and self-hosted on-premises environments. Nintex provides the ability to connect your cloud and on-premises systems through the Nintex Gateway, which allows for cloud-based workflows to securely access data that is still hosted in on-premises servers.
Nintex Gateway currently enables solution developers using Nintex Workflow Cloud to work with on-premises data via Nintex RPA, and soon will support both SharePoint on-premises and Microsoft SQL actions available directly in the design canvas without requiring cumbersome tools to be installed like a corporate VPN.
Why do you need to adopt a hybrid solution?
To understand why hybrid deployment solutions are beneficial to an organization, let’s look at an example. Let’s say your organization requires employees to submit expense requests to an on-premises database but they’re working from home. This is where a hybrid model is handy.
Many expense processes are still reliant on either manual, paper-based processes, or require corporate network log-in to submit the request, which can add additional steps for remote employees and make the process difficult to complete on a mobile device.
By utilizing Nintex Workflow Cloud, users can easily fill out a form on their mobile device with Nintex Mobile, and then let the workflow behind the scenes securely submit that information through the Nintex Gateway into the corporate on-premises environment. The workflow can either store the data in a database or kick off an on-premises approval process that was built previously using Nintex for SharePoint on-premises.
And that’s just one example of how a hybrid deployment solution can be useful in your organization.
Moving forward with a hybrid model
No matter the industry or process, when you need to work in a hybrid IT environment, the Nintex Gateway and Nintex Platform are designed to let you build at the speed of business without writing a single line of code. These automated solutions greatly reduce complexity for developers and end-users alike and maintain the security that modern organizations need.
If you are interested in learning more about the Nintex Process Platform and what it can do to help your organization build a hybrid environment, click here to request a live demo.
