NIST defines this as the result of the composition of the three implementation models mentioned previously (the private, public, and community clouds), trying to take the advantages of each of the three in order to make up for where the others are weaker. The clouds used remain distinct entities, and this can cause a lack of operational consistency. Therefore, companies that adopt this model have the task of guaranteeing, through proprietary technologies, the interoperability of their servers, optimizing them for the specific roles they must play.

A feature that distinguishes the hybrid cloud from all others is the cloudburst or the possibility of being able to dynamically transfer excess traffic from the private cloud to the public cloud in the presence of large peak demand.

This implementation model is adopted by those companies that intend to share their software applications while retaining their sensitive data in internal clouds.