Taking advantage of cloud technology is popular with businesses that want to move forward faster. But before making the leap, you will need to consider which cloud computing solution is best for your business, depending on how flexible, scalable, secure and accessible your cloud infrastructure needs to be.
There are pros and cons to each type of cloud, so let’s delve right in and take a look at the different types of cloud technology that might make the difference in where you take your business in 2022.
What is a Public Cloud?
Public cloud providers offer infrastructure and services that are accessed and shared by all customers. Public clouds like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform are scalable and affordable for many businesses as capacity is purchased on demand. This means that you will only pay for the services that you use.
The downside to public clouds is the limited control of their network and data as this is under the cloud provider. This makes it harder to establish private connections or control which country or jurisdiction your data is located in. And , because public clouds have their resources shared by many customers, there is a higher risk of security vulnerabilities within the platform, potentially affecting underlying customers. This ultimately means that you may end up spending more on cyber security measures such as threat detection and penetration testing to safeguard your business data.
What is private cloud computing?
Private clouds are dedicated environments, usually residing behind a firewall and reserved solely for individual businesses. Private clouds are hosted in data centre environments and provide authorised users with access to their data and application, just like with public clouds. The difference is that no one else can access those computing resources, making them inherently much safer than public clouds.
The downside of private clouds is that there is much more responsibility on the customer to manage them. In-house IT departments can become swamped with the regularity of patching and updating services. Private cloud companies can manage everything from hardware maintenance to software updates and security and performance monitoring. However, this all comes at an extra cost.
The overall benefits to your business of using a private cloud is the added security and control you will have over your business data. For businesses with tight regulatory requirements, both in terms of data access and location of data storage, the private cloud is the most viable option.
Hybrid cloud computing
A hybrid cloud is essentially a combination of public and private clouds. This means that a business will use not public and private clouds depending on the nature of the data and how much security is required. Businesses can take full advantage of the scalability options that the public cloud brings, whilst keeping sensitive and business critical data in the secure private cloud.
A multi-cloud model also offers some reassurance in reducing dependence on a single provider, avoiding vendor lock-in and potential single points of failure.
Using multiple cloud solutions is becoming increasingly popular with businesses around the globe, owing to the greater flexibility that comes with being able to choose which options fulfils each departmental need the best. Not every department will have the same requirements from the cloud, some having strict requirements around data location, while others may require applications only available in public clouds.
The downside to using this hybrid approach is the lack of communication and interoperability between the two clouds, meaning potential increases in resource overhead to manage the clouds. Workflow may also become impacted as business process changes may have to be made you cater for the hybrid set up.
Still not sure which option is best for your business? Contact us to be connected to one of our experienced IT consultants who will be able to match your needs to the right cloud infrastructure,
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