Which is better for you? Public, Private or hybrid cloud. Find out here

The cloud technology is here to stay and has evolved gradually into a necessity today among individuals and organisations. With this it means it has become almost inevitable that you have to either use or access a cloud service in your life time to say the least. It is therefore important to understand the options before you in today’s cloud computing world.

Public Clouds

A public cloud simply put is one in which services and infrastructure you need are provided of course by a provider over the internet. Resources you use on this platform are shared by other users as well and frankly speaking, that’s what many people and organisations you know use as it is more convenient and easy to access to resources using this method. As you may expect, these clouds are more prone to security issues than private clouds.

You should go for public cloud if you require the following;

• If your application or resource is going to be shared by lots of other people
• if you need a development server or machine
• You have SaaS (Software as a Service) applications from a vendor who has a well-implemented security strategy.
• You need incremental capacity (the ability to add computer capacity for peak times).
• You’re doing collaboration projects.
• You’re doing an ad-hoc software development project using a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering cloud.

Private Clouds

In sharp contrast to the public cloud defined above, the private cloud offers your resources and infrastructure over a private network. From this definition, it means you have greater control over how files and applications are used and shared within your own cloud. Well with greater control comes greater responsibilities as well. You would need to build in your own applications which may turn out to be cost saving or time consuming depending on the sensitivity of your applications.

A private cloud is the obvious choice when

• Your business is your data and your applications. Therefore, control and security are paramount.
• Your business is part of an industry that must conform to strict security and data privacy issues.
• Your company is large enough to run a next generation cloud data center efficiently and effectively on its own.

Hybrid Clouds

From the name hybrid, you can already guess that this cloud is a combination of the two previous options. This is arguably the best choice for you is your are looking at greater flexibility but again it means that you’re going to have to keep track of multiple security platforms. Another “downside” is that you would have to make sure applications communicate properly with each other always to ensure a smooth running of your operations.

Here are a couple of situations where a hybrid environment is best.

• Your company wants to use a SaaS application but is concerned about security. Your SaaS vendor can create a private cloud just for your company inside their firewall. They provide you with a virtual private network (VPN)for additional security.
• Your company offers services that are tailored for different vertical markets. You can use a public cloud to interact with the clients but keep their data secured within a private cloud.

Now that you know the options available to you, let’s look at how the cloud has evolved over the years as put together by RightScale

The “self explanatory” images above provided by right scale in an April 2014 publication on its website.