Which Type of Cloud is Right for my Company?

Written by Comcity

There is no escaping it, practically every business is moving to the cloud or at least thinking 
about it. Contrary to popular opinion Cloud is actually not something new; it has been around
in many forms since computing was pioneered.  Mainframes, moved to mini-mainframes,
followed by software developing as a service (such as the original Hotmail), followed by the
development of application service providers - all of these are "Cloud" solutions. 

So why all the fuss lately?  Previously, cloud deployment was slow, hard to maintain and
limited in scope. It was not cheap either due to the costs of storage and
internet connections alone, not to mention the specialised workforce required
to maintain it. Today however all the factors have aligned to truly allow for
cost effective, efficient cloud services - the price of storage and bandwidth
continues to drop rapidly, and enterprise level enabling technology (such as
virtualisation) have become more mainstream.

Although cloud computing is claiming to be a transformative means of managing IT,
much of the terminology has left organisations baffled as to which cloud
solution is better for their needs. Basically Cloud is a clever terminology which
allows for us to grasp the concept easily, but the spectrum of services and
solutions which 'cloud' now describes is vast. Therefore, the principal
question that you need to ask is 'which type of cloud is right for my
company?' To help you begin to evaluate this, let us examine some of the
features and functions of the Cloud options available to your business.

Public Cloud: Is characterised as being available to clients
from a third party service provider via the internet. Essentially all
infrastructure is hosted at the vendor's premises. The customer has no
visibility over the location of the cloud computing infrastructure and the
computing infrastructure is shared between organizations. Public cloud services
allow SMBs access to applications they normally could not afford because they
work well for hosted applications. Being public, the solution is usually easily
accessible via a browser from multiple devices enabling easy (yet still secure)
access. It is usually cheaper, quicker to deploy than a private cloud and it
has some of the largest and most trusted brands in the world flying its flag.
Gmail and Hotmail utilise the public cloud.

Private Cloud: Infrastructure is dedicated solely to individual
clients and is not shared with other organisations, therefore it is more costly
than public cloud solutions. Often used by large multi-site organisations, private
cloud may be externally hosted or hosted on-premise at a head office and thus it
is considered more secure. This is largely due to the fact that there is no multi-
tenancy involvement in the private cloud - meaning that you do not share space with
other businesses - thus there is higher control over security and who has
access to what information. Also better efficiency and credibility can be
achieved via a private cloud due to the basic fact that it is a company's
private infrastructure. Another advantage of the private cloud is that
upgrades, backups and maintenance are handled for you by your provider. It is
worth noting that a private cloud will not benefit every organisation, larger
businesses such as a banks are large enough to run their own networks and
high-grade IT Infrastructure.

 

Hybrid Cloud: A hybrid cloud is a composition of elements of
the private cloud and the public cloud.  Organisations host particular
critical, secure applications in private clouds or on premise, then the less
important applications are hosted in the public cloud.  This approach is
being seen more and more, with many organisations opting to send backup 
data to the cloud rather than tape, or host their email in the cloud. Typically 
your organisation already uses a spam filtering in the cloud, with a local mail
server - this could be defined as a Hybrid email solution. Ideally, the hybrid
approach allows a business to take advantage of the scalability and
cost-effectiveness that a public cloud computing environment offers without
exposing mission-critical applications and data to third-party vulnerabilities.

 

Each cloud solution boast many strengths and weaknesses, the key for any organisation
is striking the right balance between price, security and flexibility. Different service and
deployment models can be adopted to match the requirements of different types
of workloads from across your organisation. Choosing the right path or service
is about asking questions. Why do you want to take your business to the cloud?
What security and compliance issues need to be addressed? How important is data
security and control for your business? How fast is your content growing? How
much storage capacity will you need over the next few years? What type of data
do your users access, and how often do they access it?

 

Ultimately, the decision to go with the private, public or hybrid cloud depends on your
company. Answering critical questions around internal performance capabilities,
personnel requirements and costs will help narrow down the type of cloud
service model that meets your needs for quality of service, reliability, scalability,
data management and security. Whichever model you choose, the next hurdle is
implementation; it is crucial to not only choose an experienced, reliable
service provider but also one who is prepared to work hard to develop a deep understanding
of your business and its needs. Our next blog will concentrate on
considerations to evaluate when choosing a Cloud Provider; we will cover the
important questions you should ask yourself before selecting a Cloud Provider.