Cloud computing is emerging as the most sought-after technology solution by enterprises worldwide, and rightly so. The potential of cloud computing is infinite for organizations ready to invest and leverage it to their advantage. Cloud's ability to transform traditional businesses into agile and modern data-driven enterprises is cementing its place as the technology that will define future digital strategies for businesses.
As organizations from across the industries move their business to the cloud, new cloud environments are emerging. Today, service providers offer diverse cloud solutions to organizations of every shape and size across three cloud architectures – public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud. This post will explore these three cloud environments and their benefits and help you recognize the one best suited for your business needs. Read on!
Public Cloud Computing
In a public cloud, resources such as servers, networks, and storage are shared between multiple users, making it the most cost-effective and affordable cloud solution. Service providers own and operate these resources and offer cloud computing services to users over the Internet. IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS are different types of cloud services that are offered under this cloud deployment model.
Most service providers offer a free plan or charge a minimum usage fee, which lets users test the cloud services before upgrading to premium plans. Moreover, public cloud services enable organizations to quickly scale their usage up or down, depending on their requirement. Public cloud services such as web-based emails, CRM applications, and applications for storage, testing, designing, and deployment provide flexibility to organizations as they can be bought on a pay-per-use basis.
Advantages of Public Cloud:
Cost-saving: Public cloud helps save costs on maintenance and operation of hardware, software, and skilled personnel.
Low administration workload: Public clouds are hosted off-site, thus reducing administrative workload and outsourcing security management.
Flexibility: Cloud resources and services can be accessed from anywhere, and a vast network of servers ensure good reliability and guard against failure.
High scalability: Organizations can leverage the conceptually infinite scalability of cloud services. Companies can increase or decrease their usage seamlessly in real-time and on-demand.
When to use Public Cloud
Public cloud is suited for organizations with predictable computing requirements that can be scaled up or down depending on the demand. It can be used for services and applications vital to business and IT operations; for example, GSuite, which offers cloud solutions for email, file storage, and communication. Public cloud services are also ideal for small companies for software deployment and test environments.
Private Cloud Computing
A private cloud resides on the company’s infrastructure and is firewall-protected and physically secured. Resources in a private cloud environment are exclusively used for one organization, ensuring total control of infrastructure for superior security of sensitive data. Private cloud infrastructure resources such as servers are either physically located in the company's data centers or hosted by a third-party, solely for one organization.
Organizations such as financial institutions, government agencies, and mid to large companies are the primary private cloud computing users since they need a high level of control and security of their data to handle operations. Even though the private cloud is expensive, large organizations widely use it to get customized and dedicated cloud resources as per their own IT requirements.
Advantages of Private Cloud:
High security and privacy: Private clouds offer an additional layer of data security to companies as they reside on the organizations' data infrastructure, making them isolated and exclusive.
Increased reliability: With dedicated servers for organizations, private clouds offer a higher performance level and increased reliability.
Customization: Private cloud solutions enable organizations to customize cloud resources as per their business needs completely.
When to use Private Cloud
Private cloud is best suited for highly regulated industries and government agencies that need strong security and control over their IT infrastructure. It is designed to serve large organizations that require high computing performance and advanced data capabilities to function efficiently.
The third type of cloud computing environment – hybrid computing is gaining a lot of popularity amongst businesses rapidly. Companies across industries are moving towards a hybrid cloud computing environment to save costs and load on local resources. Organizations looking to optimize the physical space requirement of on-premise cloud infrastructure while seeking to increase computing capabilities are becoming fast adopters of hybrid cloud computing.
Hybrid Cloud Computing
A hybrid cloud blends the advantages of public and private cloud, thereby providing a higher level of flexibility, security, deployment options, and compliance at a lower cost. A hybrid cloud is a cost-efficient model that offers security and data protection of private cloud computing with the adaptability and scalability of public cloud computing.
Hybrid clouds can be created on both public and private secured servers. They provide organizations with scalability options that rapidly increase their storage or compute power requirements during high demand. Furthermore, hybrid clouds let users seamlessly switch between the cloud types without hampering business operations. With hybrid clouds, organizations benefit by saving the expenses of owning dedicated cloud infrastructure and maintaining data security. They enable higher operational scalability and flexibility for businesses.
The crucial factors while evaluating the three cloud architectures – public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud are accessibility, cost, scalability, and reliability. Assessing your company's requirements by evaluating use cases and user needs can help you choose the cloud environment that will drive your business's digital transformation.
Advantage Extentia
At Extentia, we have been helping companies design, maintain, and implement applications on the cloud for a long time. We support our clients with private cloud consulting solutions, cloud infrastructure services, and other cloud-based services. We have the experience to help the companies effortlessly transition their IT infrastructure to the cloud to leverage benefits. Connect with us to know more!
Want the full infographic? Get it here!
Read other Extentia Blog posts here!