Private, Public or Hybrid: Which Type of Cloud is Best for Your Business?
Each of the above-mentioned cloud computing solutions comes with different value propositions. Choosing between the three depends upon factors relating to their limitations and use cases. In short, the cloud deployment solution depends on the needs of an organization. Remember, what is best for other businesses may not be the most suitable for yours. While for some, a public cloud solution may be the key to success, a private cloud solution might do wonders for others. In other words, each of these solutions has its share of benefits and drawbacks. So, choose one that makes deploying and maintaining a full-scale solution easy and helps your business run efficiently in the long term.
With the global cloud computing market expected to reach $623.3 billion by 2023, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the use of cloud computing is increasing by leaps and bounds.
Simply put, the growth of cloud computing is exponential. Businesses across the globe are realizing its benefits and leveraging it to the core.
That’s the reason for a third of a companies’ IT budget is allocated towards cloud services.
What is Cloud Computing?
Before we delve deeper into the world of cloud computing, let us get the basics right. Cloud computing provides remote desktop services while working on a range of classifications, types, and architecture models. It is a transformative networked computing model, which is classified into three major categories:
- Public cloud
- Private cloud
- Hybrid cloud
From facilitating significant cost savings to stabilizing business operations, the above-mentioned cloud computing solutions do it all. Further, they provide users with access to the data from anywhere. In other words, whether you are managing data from your office in New York or working remotely using managed IT services in Washington DC, cloud computing allows you to manage your work smoothly. This is one of the main reasons that 42% of businesses are moving towards cloud adoption.
Which Solution Can Work Best for Your Business?
When it comes to choosing the most suitable solution for your business, the choice becomes difficult.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each solution?
Why should a business choose a particular solution?
Which is the best cloud solution out there?
These are a few of the many questions that businesses should ponder over. Let us try finding out answers to these questions by analyzing each of these solutions.
1. Public Cloud
This cloud computing model delivers IT services across the Web. Based on the consumption of computing resources, the cloud computing services offered by the public cloud can be free, subscription-based, paid, or freemium.
Its functionalities range from common services such as email, apps, and storage to OS platforms along with infrastructure environments. Further, it shares a pool of computing resources between various tenants, which are developed, managed, and maintained by a cloud vendor. All in all, the public cloud is a popular cloud computing model, which offers vast choices in the context of solutions and computing resources.
Advantages:
Lowered cost is one of the greatest advantages of a public cloud. As mentioned, public clouds are either free or are most cost-effective.
Public clouds come with the flexibility to cater to unpredictable workload demands.
Since the infrastructure is managed by the cloud vendor, the complexities, and the requirement of IT expertise decrease.
Based on the various Service Level Agreements (SLAs), the pricing options for the public cloud have a flexible approach.
The cost agility feature of the public cloud lets businesses focus on investing in innovative projects while following lean growth strategies.
Disadvantages:
If you are opting for large-scale use of public cloud, the total ownership cost may rise exponentially. This is especially applicable to medium and large organizations.
Since computing resources are shared between multiple tenants in the public cloud, it may not be the most appropriate solution from security and critical IT workload points of view.
If your business has stringent compliance needs such as HIPAA, maintaining a public cloud environment can be difficult because of low visibility and control over the infrastructure.
2. Private Cloud
A private cloud is dedicated to using a single organization or business. Its data center resources are either located on-premise or are operated off-site by a third-party vendor.
Its computing resources are isolated and delivered through a secure and confidential private network. These credentials are not shared with other customers.
A private cloud is not only customizable but also meets the critical security needs of the organization. Besides, it has greater visibility of and control over the infrastructure, thereby helping organizations operate compliance-sensitive IT work without breaching the security and affecting the performance.
Advantages:
- Dedicated and Secure Environment
A private cloud has a dedicated and secure environment. It keeps your data on your hardware and controls it through your software. It also makes way for managed cybersecurity by a cloud service provider who oversees the network and information security of other companies.
- Compliant with Strict Regulations
Businesses with specific compliance requirements can manage and structure their private deployment to make it work in compliance with strict regulations.
- Highly Scalable and Effective
It can meet the unpredictable requirements of an organization seamlessly without compromising security.
Private cloud deployment provides businesses with a plethora of options. This, in turn, provides them with flexibility in decisions while using advanced technologies and services.
Disadvantages:
- Limited Access for Mobile Users
The highest level of cloud security makes it difficult for mobile users to access a private cloud.
If the private cloud data centre is limited to on-premise computing resources, it might be unable to scale infrastructure to meet unpredictable demands.
3. Hybrid Cloud
As the name suggests, the hybrid cloud is an amalgamation of both the public and private cloud solutions. It works in an integrated infrastructure environment, where apps and data workloads can share resources between public and private cloud solutions.
Advantages:
- Scalable Public Cloud Environment with Proper Data Security
A hybrid cloud can easily scale public cloud environment without compromising on security. It keeps sensitive IT workloads safe from the inherent cybersecurity risks.
Hybrid cloud distributes the services across multiple data centres, ranging from public to private cloud, which is why it is highly reliable.
- Improved Security Posture
Hybrid cloud leverages the private cloud to make sensitive IT workloads run on dedicated resources. As a result, it improves the security posture. Further, it spreads regular workloads across the inexpensive public cloud to minimize cost investments.
Disadvantages:
- Need for Strong Integration and Compatibility
The hybrid cloud infrastructure spans different locations and categories. Hence, there is a need for strong compatibility and integration. However, this can be a limitation when it comes to managing public cloud because of the lack of direct control over the infrastructure.
- Additional Infrastructure Complications
Hybrid cloud works as a mix of private and public cloud architectures, thereby making way for additional infrastructure complications.