Hybrid cloud promises to marry the benefits of public cloud and on-premises infrastructure.

On-premises infrastructure gives enterprises greater control over their data, applications and connectivity, and is necessary for some regulatory compliance -- for example, European data sovereignty regulations requiring customer data be stored in its country of origin.

Public cloud, meanwhile, provides flexibility, reduced cost, increased security and lets enterprises outsource the hassle of running IT infrastructure.

Hybrid cloud provides the best of both: Run workloads on premises, on hosted private cloud, or in the public cloud -- wherever it makes the most sense. Get the control of on-premises infrastructure and the flexibility and reduced cost of public cloud.

At least, that's the theory. It works if you do it right. Do it wrong and you get the worst of both worlds.

VMware Inc. has good advice on making the most of your hybrid cloud deployment in this handy infographic:

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