How To Choose the Best Cloud Computing Approach

Everything you should know about public, private, hybrid, and community cloud computing.

Key Takeaways:

• There are four types of cloud computing: private, hybrid, public, and community
• The best approach depends on your business needs
• The public cloud is ideal for scalability and elasticity
• Private, hybrid, and community clouds are ideal for industries with stringent compliance requirements 

In the modern world, cloud technology is indispensable to business success. However, not every cloud infrastructure is a good fit for your business. Understanding the different cloud computing deployment models and the unique problems they each solve can ease your cloud migration. This article will explore the public, private, hybrid, and community clouds, their pros and cons, and their ideal applications. Let’s dive in!

Public cloud

The public cloud delivers computing resources over the internet for free or through subscription-based pricing. The cloud provider manages the data centers where your workloads run and maintains the hardware and infrastructure of the cloud environment. They also ensure you have sufficient bandwidth for rapid access to data and applications. 

A good way to think about the public cloud is as a multi-tenant environment where users share cloud computing resources through a self-service interface. This implies that multiple organizations’ workloads can run concurrently on the shared physical server. However, your organization’s data is logically isolated from that of other organizations.

The public cloud environment helps users leverage scalability, elasticity, a low up-front cost, flexible pricing, and reduced complexity to improve their operations.

• Scalability: You can instantly increase or decrease your capacity to meet changing business needs
• Flexible pricing: There’s a low up-front cost, and you only pay for the resources you use, depending on your service level agreement
• Reduced complexity: The cloud provider manages the cloud computing infrastructure

These are great benefits for most organizations. However, the security, unpredictable costs, and limited visibility of a public cloud environment make it unviable for some. To break it down: 

• Security: Banks, healthcare institutions, and related organizations using sensitive mission-critical operations need higher security 
• Poor cost forecasting: Workload increases could cause you to exceed your budget, eating into your profits
• Limited visibility: Public cloud computing doesn’t provide complete visibility of your data storage metrics

Given its strengths and constraints, a public cloud environment is ideal for businesses that want the scalability and elasticity to respond to unexpected workload demands instantly through flexible pricing without the complexity of managing a cloud infrastructure.

Private cloud

The private cloud delivers computing resources through a secure private network. It is a single-tenant environment with isolated access. All the software and hardware resources are dedicated to your organization, giving you exclusive access. 

Private clouds can be hosted on-site, on a rented off-site data center, or on the cloud vendor’s infrastructure. You can choose to manage the infrastructure or outsource some or all management aspects to a cloud provider.

A private cloud environment allows greater customization, visibility, and scalability.

• Customization and flexibility: You’ll be free to buy the software and hardware you prefer and customize it to your needs
• Greater visibility and security control: All operations run behind your firewall, providing greater access and security control visibility
• Scalability: You can scale your capacity without compromising on performance and security.

The main drawbacks of a private cloud environment are cost, complexity, and limited scalability.

• High cost: The purchase, operational, and maintenance costs can be very high, particularly for on-site infrastructure
• Increased complexity: A private cloud is more difficult to deploy than a public cloud, as it requires more time and resources and more robust integration and compatibility
• Your scalability may be limited: This depends on your reliance on on-site computing resources

Considering these factors, a private cloud environment works best for organizations with highly specialized regulatory, security, infrastructure, and control needs and workloads with predictable cloud usage patterns.

Hybrid cloud

A hybrid cloud architecture integrates on-site public and private cloud infrastructure, providing orchestration, application, and management flexibility across all three. It provides a unified structure to run and scale your cloud-native or traditional workloads more efficiently.

With a hybrid cloud environment, you can use the private cloud environment to run sensitive mission-critical workloads and the public cloud for non-sensitive operations. The public cloud can be a complementary resource for unexpected network traffic changes. 

The most compelling reasons for using a hybrid cloud environment are to satisfy regulatory and security compliance, gain superior scalability, and optimize resource allocation.

• Regulatory and security compliance: The hybrid cloud enables you to consistently implement security compliance regulations and laws across different cloud environments
• Cloud bursting: You can scale your capacity instantly and inexpensively using public cloud computing resources without impacting private cloud workloads
• Resource optimization: You can run variable workloads on the public cloud and migrate workloads with a predictable capacity to the private cloud

Despite these benefits, a hybrid cloud environment might not be a good fit for some organizations, as it comes with added complexity and cost:

• Complexity: The integration between private and public clouds adds complexity to the overall environment, making hybrid clouds difficult to deploy and manage.
• Cost: The initial cost of deploying a hybrid cloud is higher than that of a public cloud. Moreover, switching between cloud environments can drive up costs when done incorrectly.

Hybrid cloud best suits businesses that function across industries with different IT regulations and want the perfect combination of cost, control, and performance.

Community cloud

The community cloud is a relatively new cloud computing model where multiple organizations share services and resources based on standard regulatory and operational requirements. It integrates the benefits and features of multiple cloud types to create a cloud environment designed for a specific industry.

Organizations using a community cloud infrastructure can host their own data centers and share the responsibilities and costs. This can be at peer facilities or existing on-site infrastructure. Alternatively, they can meet their cloud computing needs with the help of a hybrid cloud provider.

Whichever hosting option an organization chooses, they typically enjoy the following benefits:

• Regulatory compliance: There’s a standard interpretation and implementation of regulatory laws, significantly reducing vulnerability to legal action.
• Cost-effectiveness: The community cloud is cheaper than the private cloud since organizations share operation and maintenance costs. Additionally, organizations connect to a unified environment, eliminating the need for different servers.
• Customization: It is easy to configure the cloud environment to the community’s needs because organizations are from the same industry.

These benefits may make the community cloud perfect for your business. But just like the other cloud infrastructure types, the community cloud has certain drawbacks. These include: 

• Limited scalability: Resources like bandwidth and storage are limited and shared between organizations, which may create occasional performance lags.
• It’s a relatively new model: Community cloud hasn’t caught on like other cloud deployment models. Thus, finding other organizations with similar requirements to share a community cloud environment is challenging.

The goal of a community cloud is to enable multiple users to work on joint applications and projects that belong to the community. This makes it ideal for large manufacturing companies, healthcare companies, governments, and organizations in similar industries.

Final thoughts

Ultimately, the choice of deploying a private, hybrid, public, or community cloud depends on your business needs. If scalability and elasticity are your top priorities, and you don’t have stringent regulatory requirements, consider a public cloud. The best models for sensitive data and workloads are private, hybrid, and community clouds.

Feel free to contact us for help with your cloud computing strategy.