Monday, January 8, 2018

Private Vs Public Vs Hybrid Clouds: What's the Difference?

Organizations big and small are now using cloud services to facilitate their operations. According to RightScale's State of the Cloud Report, 95% of Information Technology (IT) professionals use some type of cloud service, up from 93% in 2015. As cloud technology improves by becoming faster and more secure, this number will likely grow even higher in the years to come.

But if you're thinking of adopting cloud services in your organization, you should familiarize yourself with the three different deployment models, including private, public and hybrid clouds. While all cloud services are characterized by the use of remote servers to process and store data, there are nuances between the different deployment models.

Public Clouds

A public cloud is a cloud service that's available to the public. Some public clouds are free, while others use a traditional pay-as-you-go format. The Cloud Service Provider (CSP) hosts and maintains the server and other associated hardware, which the customer accesses over the internet.

The public cloud's defining characteristics are public availability and multi-user environment. Any person or organization can access and use a public cloud. As a result, each public cloud typically has multiple users.

Some of the benefits of public clouds include:
   No local hardware to maintain
   No long-term commitment (pay as you go)
   Easy to scale
   Effective testing environment
   Reliable
On the other hand, public clouds limit customization and configuration while also posing a higher risk of cyber intrusion.

Private Clouds

Also known as an internal cloud, a private cloud differs in the sense that it's operated by a single organization or entity. While public clouds are available to everyone -- and many organizations use the same public cloud -- a private cloud is only available to one organization.

Private clouds perform the same basic functions as public clouds, allowing users to process and store data remotely.

Private clouds can be managed either internally within an organization or externally by a third-party CSP. Because they are restricted to a single organization, however, private clouds tend to offer greater security than their private counterpart.

Some of the benefits of private clouds include:
   No long-term commitment (pay as you go)
   Lower risk of cyber intrusion
   More customization and configuration options
   Supports virtually any application
   Easy to scale
   Reliable
The only real downsides to a private cloud are its high cost and complexity. For many organizations, however, the unlimited freedom to configure their cloud according to their needs is well worth the investment.

Hybrid Clouds

The third type of cloud-computing infrastructure is the hybrid cloud. As the name suggests, this includes two or more separate clouds that are bound and deployed together. An organization, for instance, may use a hybrid cloud to automatically shift processing demands from a private to a public cloud during hours of peak usage. In doing so, the organization avoids overages with its private cloud without any interruption of service.

Another example of a hybrid cloud application is when an organization uses a private cloud to host sensitive data and a public cloud to host less sensitive data. Being that private clouds are more secure, this protects the organization's sensitive data from cyber threats.

Some of the benefits of hybrid clouds include:
   No long-term commitment (pay as you go)
   More secure than a standalone public cloud
   Low cost of set up
   Greater flexibility of IT architecture
To recap, the three primary cloud deployment models are public, private and hybrid. Public clouds are available to the public; private clouds are restricted to a single organization; and hybrid clouds use both public and private clouds.

For more information about this or other Bit by Bit solutions you can contact us at 877.860.5831

Robert Blake