If you are not familar with the term Cloud Computing refer to this post instead

Modern IT infrastructure has as an essencial component, this being Cloud Computing. It became the essential due to what it provides for businesses in terms of flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness provide business the needed agility in this ever changing digital landscape. There are multiple types of cloud computing, in this article I’ll explore the differences between private, public, hybrid and multicloud.

Private Cloud

Private cloud is a type of cloud computing where IT resources are offered over a private network or the internet to a single organization, in other words, there is no multitenancy for the cloud from an organization perspective. The organization becames the sole owner and all that it accompanies to manage such infrastructure. This includes but is not limited to management, maintenance, and security. Private cloud services can be delivered on-premises or by a third-party provider.

There are a few use cases where having a private cloud are better than using the other options. A private cloud provides greater control and perhaps security, the assumption is because is used by a single organization, therefore a lower risk of security risk. Additionally, there is a higher control over the infrastructure that allows organizations to adjust it to their specific needs. Example, data that must stay within a country to comply with regulatory requirements.

However, private cloud is rather more expensive than public cloud. Organization need to be able to estimate their demands, invest in infrastructure and people to manage it. It does not scale easily and worst case scenario, scaling it might require adding new physical locations.

Public Cloud

Public cloud is a type of cloud computing where IT resources are offered over a public network/internet by a vendor. The vendor owns the full infrastructure and is responsible for the managemnet, maintenance, and security. The infrastructure is shared among multiple organizations and usually the resources are split in a logical way throught the implemenation of virtual boundaries save a few exceptions. Unlike private cloud, where there is an upfront cost to purchase or rent the infrastructure, the public cloud is delivered based on the concept of pay for what you use or pay-as-you-go model.

This model is ideal for those that wish to deploy their apps quickly without having to worry about the infrastructure maintenance. Typically there are a number of services offered by public cloud providers in the form of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS.

Not all is a good, there are some items to consider when making the decision to go with public cloud. Organization do not have control of the infrastructure and can be seen as a security concern. Performance of certain services can be impacted due to the nature of shared environments.

Hybrid Cloud

As the name implies, hybrid cloud combines both public and private cloud. Organizations can deploy resources across both private and public cloud infrastructure targetting different type of workloads. Example, private for regulatory purposes and public for services that must available across a number of locations.

The flexibility provided by hybrid cloud allows organization to adapt and optimize their resources in term of costs, security, and performance. It can drive the costs down by using public cloud for testing purposes where resources are provisioned when needed and destroyed when no longer necessary.

Implementation of such solution can became complex to manage. Organizations need to invest in people to acquire the necessary skills to be able to get the righ level of balance between private and public cloud and all the nuances of such implementation.

Multi-Cloud

Similar to hybrid, multi cloud is a type of cloud computing that involves the usage fo multiple public cloud providers. It follows the same approach as hybrid cloud, organization can use one public cloud provider for one type of workload or another one for another type of workloads, lets say, one focused on AI while the other focused on IaaS. Basically, organizations have the ability of choosing the best cloud services for their particular requirements.

Another approach is to use multicloud as a way to prevent outages in a single provider, although this makes sense, it is hard to implement as either the application must be prepared to run on both clouds or organization need to reply on cloud agnostic services, such as, Kubernetes. This can lead to a complex model for deployment as leveraging the cloud native services becames far more complext that perhaps is needed.

Choosing the Right Cloud Infrastructure

The right Cloud infrastructure will be determined by the organization requirements.

  • Public Cloud is good for rapid deployments with little to no upfront investment, no infrastructure maintenance nor investment.

  • Private Cloud is good for cases that require a higher level of control and security.

  • Hybrid Cloud combines the private and public cloud worlds.

  • Multicloud allows organizations to choose the best services for their needs.

When deciding on which one to choose, it is important to factor in the following:

  • People know-how

  • Costs

  • Regulatory restrictions

  • Forecasted growth

  • Organization strategy

All of these factors will contribute to decision of which cloud to use.

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