Choices and Possibilities with Public and Private Cloud Solutions

Although the terminology can cause eyes to glaze from boredom, cloud computing genuinely offers intriguing options for a growing number of new and evolving businesses. A cloud solution is possible for virtually any type of application or business need. Private and public clouds are the two major types, with hybrid clouds another option some organizations choose. The right solution depends on what each organization needs.

Public clouds are operated by infrastructure providers for a variety of customers who want to use a cloud solution for some aspect of their businesses. These cloud operators provision their data centers with banks of servers, and the customers pay to use a portion of the data center resources remotely. For example, consider a small software startup company that develops browser-based software for digital artists. This business can utilize the services of a public cloud to deploy the art software to their own customers. The more users the business gets for the art software, the more resources the business will want to purchase.

The public cloud provider for the digital art software company might also have customers that include online email developers or designers of online gaming apps. All of the potential business customers of a public cloud save money over many other solutions because they only pay for the resources they need. These companies do not have to pay to build the entire infrastructure of their cloud or server solution. The scalability of such services also means any of the business customers can expand or downsize as necessary, easily adjusting resource consumption as required.

Private clouds, however, are constructed for the exclusive use of the company that requests them. The resources are solely reserved for the private entity, which also means the company itself shoulders all infrastructure costs. In the hypothetical case of the browser-based art software, for instance, the company might want to invest in a private cloud if the software grows to global popularity. Such a company might want full control of all hardware and software from which their programs are deployed. Exclusivity and the inherent privacy come at the price of also being responsible for all related hardware and software upgrade costs.

In a hybrid cloud arrangement, a company might have private cloud resources reserved for a specific aspect of their business operations, such as with tasks that require regulatory compliance. Other elements of the business, though, might be operated through public cloud resources. The best way to determine the right solution is to assess the budget and what the company needs. Between the scalability of public cloud solutions and the power of private cloud solutions, organizations have virtually endless possibilities for operating their businesses.