Public cloud vs. private cloud

In the process of deciding whether to connect your company with a private or public cloud system? It’s important to know the difference between the two so you know which is better for your business.

A public cloud shares computing resources between multiple customers. With a private cloud, all computing resources are kept by one single client. This provides an isolated data storage environment at both the software and hardware level.

Public clouds are good for flexibility, allowing your business near-unlimited scalability. But private clouds offer a greater level of security and confidentiality, a huge drawcard for many business owners.

Let’s find out more about the two options to help you decide which is better for your business.

What is a public cloud?

Public clouds offer a great range of benefits for businesses that don’t require constant connectivity. Public clouds are often utilised for testing and developing new software, using cloud storage for storing and creating backups, launching corporate database systems and applications and running machine learning and predictive analytics.

What else?

Public clouds are typically cheaper than their private counterparts, but this doesn’t restrict their target market to startups. Large companies can experience their benefits just as well, especially in regards to back-end development, non-critical infrastructure components and migrating corporate services. This allows companies to save money on upgrading and supporting their own IT infrastructure, as well as on maintenance, as the provider offers maintenance services from their location.

They also alleviate problems surrounding the proper use of local resources, as clients only utilise as much of the public cloud as they need at a certain time.

What is a public cloud?

Certain businesses and industries require private clouds to offer the benefits a public cloud cannot. Public clouds often don’t comply with external regulations or industry requirements, and this is a key factor in businesses choosing private clouds over public clouds. This could include research centres, large banks, governmental organisations and other clients with requirements for business processes, transactions, data processing and storage and perhaps the data centre’s geographical location.

One fantastic advantage of private clouds is their ability to handle a client’s specific needs. They provide more versatility for development tools, data protection and encryption technologies, middleware, hardware customisation and integration with external services. Moreover, they provide a heightened level of security that a public cloud cannot.

What else?

With a private cloud, you can select where to deploy your infrastructure. You can choose to deploy it at your own data centre or at the data centre of the cloud provider. You can also delegate infrastructure administration to your cloud provider’s experts, but you should still have your own IT department or cloud administrator that can communicate effectively with the provider to troubleshoot any issues that may arise.

It depends on your business

If your company is looking for fast service deployment, easily-utilised cloud infrastructure and pay-as-you-go pricing models, then public cloud is the way to go. Public clouds are commonly used for testing and development, and this could be the main reason for your business choosing it over private cloud.

However, if your business wants lower risks, heightened security, customised approaches and can afford infrastructure development and scaling as the company continues to grow, then you might want to go with the private cloud.

Regardless, you always need to take your company’s IT strategy into account when choosing between the different cloud deployment models. Remember that the ultimate cloud infrastructure for a business can often be a combination of both, providing you the benefits that they offer and that you need for certain business processes.

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