Is the Private or Public Cloud Right for Your Business?
It wasn’t a very long time ago when cloud computing was a niche field that only the most advanced organizations were dabbling with. Now the cloud is very much the mainstream, and it is rare to find a business that uses IT that doesn’t rely on it for a part of their infrastructure. But if you are going to add cloud services to your company, you will need to choose between the private cloud and the public cloud.
Of course, cloud computing is dominated by some of the biggest names, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. All offer the choice of private and public cloud services. So how do you know which one is right for you? Here we take a look at the public cloud and the private cloud so as to establish the strengths and weaknesses of each as well as for which types of organizations the models might be most suitable.
The public cloud is the more commonly used form of cloud computing. It’s essentially a server that shares resources between a number of different customers. As such, public cloud environments can be perfect for smaller businesses or those organizations that are just looking into the prospect of cloud computing and want to see how it can potentially benefit them. The public cloud can offer enormous infrastructure resources at no start-up cost and for a simple fee.
Of course, there are downsides to the public cloud. One may be the security and privacy issues. It is sometimes believed that because the cloud is public, it cannot be secure. But this does not have to be the case at all. High quality public cloud providers keep up-to-date with all the latest security issues. This means it’s important for organizations to look into the specifics of their provider, but there are many excellent cloud computing companies offering highly secure services. There may be some instances where a public cloud may not be deemed secure enough, but for the vast majority of businesses and organizations, they are completely sufficient.
There are, however, some issues and concerns of which it is important to be aware. For example, using unsecured applications in a public cloud environment comes with the significant risk of corporate data being exposed without you even realizing it. Public clouds can also have issues with poor authentication and weak identity management. Of course, being in full control of this is an important cyber security feature for businesses, which many public cloud providers simply do not offer.
Public clouds can be used for a huge range of applications including CMS software for websites, email and CRM programs. Smaller companies that don’t have specific needs can benefit enormously for the reliability, simplicity and scalability of the public cloud.
The private cloud is the opposite to the public cloud. A public cloud is shared by multiple businesses and organizations, whereas a private cloud is entirely dedicated to the needs of a single company.
