One of the problems with hybrid clouds is the bandwidth limitation between your private cloud in the enterprise and a public cloud provider.  The communications link can quickly become a bottleneck when one cloud tries to access data in the other cloud.  Migrating VMs between clouds can also be a problem since VMs and their associated memory will be gigabytes in size.

De-duplication technologies can help.  By removing redundant blocks of data, de-duplication reduces the amount of data that needs to be stored or transferred.  NetApp, which has been using de-duplication on its disk storage for years, now uses it in its cloud offerings.

But in the end, you will need a fat data pipe if you are going to be transferring lots of data back and forth between clouds.  That is where a service like Amazons Direct Connect can help.

Direct Connect uses a simple idea.  You first arrange for for a high speed data connection to one of Amazon’s regional Direct Connect Locations.  Once you’ve got that, your business has a high speed, private connection into Amazon’s cloud.  Typical connection speeds are 1Gb or 10Gb, although Amazon partners can provide you with slower (and cheaper) connections.  If you need higher speeds than 10Gb, you can use multiple lines.

You’ll need to pay Amazon an hourly port charge for the connection.  This is a flat hourly rate based on your connection speed.  You’ll also have a usage charge for outbound data.  All data going into the Amazon cloud is free.

If you have need to transfer large amounts of data on a continuing basis, this might actually save you money over just using the Internet directly.  The fact that the connection is private can help with compliance and security.  And, best of all, the fact that you can have a very high speed connection between your clouds helps open up new architectural possibilities.