Cloud has a claim to being crowned the most important technology buzzword of the 21st century. Part of that is down to the several meanings the term encompasses! It has blended into the contemporary lexicon so well that it’s hard to think of a time before cloud was the norm. However, the ubiquity of the cloud is fairly recent.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) first noticed the cloud in 2011 and took another seven years to closely observe cloud computing. It defined it in 2018 as:
“Cloud Computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” (SP 800-145, The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing)
In simpler words, cloud computing is a dedicated remote infrastructure (i.e, on the cloud) that is available to you based on your work compliance, security, and elasticity needs. It can enhance efficiency and facilitate geo diversification while cutting down on the management and infrastructure costs.
There can be several deployment models for the cloud, such as:
- Public Cloud
- Private Cloud
- Hybrid Cloud
- Multi-Cloud
Public Cloud
The most common type of cloud computing deployment, public cloud services are third-party owned and delivered remotely over the internet. Popular examples include Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services. The most alluring features of public cloud infrastructure are higher scalability and a low-cost subscription-based model that is linked directly to usage.
● When to use it?
Public cloud can be useful in the following conditions:
- Test environment and software development
- Communication services between a specific set of users
- An additional or overflow resource to match varying requirements
● Advantages
- There is no heavy investment required to deploy and maintain a public cloud infrastructure.
- Flexible pricing options are available as per your requirements.
- No need for infrastructure management as the cloud vendor is responsible for it.
- Almost unlimited scalability and flexibility with lesser complexities of maintenance.
● Disadvantages
- The total cost of ownership can rise exponentially for large-scale users, as was memorably pointed out recently by Andreesen Horowitz.
- No control over how your data is managed.
- Even though public cloud infrastructure ensures security measures, it is seen as the least secure of all cloud infrastructures.
Private Cloud
As the name suggests, the private cloud is dedicated to the singular use of an organization. Your computing resources cannot be shared with any other entity. Either a third party, the off-site vendor manages the data center resources, or they are located on-site — delivered through private networks. Private clouds can be customized to meet the workload without compromising on security and performance.
● When to use it?
The private cloud is most apt for situations like:
- In a government agency or highly regulated industry
- For protecting sensitive data
- Organizations that have the bandwidth to invest in high performing technology
- Companies that need full control over their IT workloads and subsequent infrastructure for security purposes
● Advantages
- The exclusivity of private cloud infrastructure is perhaps most sought-after.
- There is no compromise on security and performance while ensuring higher scalability and efficiency.
- Organizations can customize security measures to run their own configuration and protocols.
- Highly flexible and fully controllable cloud environment as no other organization is on it.
- Private cloud infrastructure is highly flexible as you can transform it as per the changing business landscape.
● Disadvantages
- The private cloud architecture is expensive with a comparatively high TCO (total cost of ownership) than public cloud alternatives.
- As the private cloud is highly secure, mobile users may face some difficulty in accessing the services.
- Depending on the capacity of your on-premise computing resources, scalability potential will vary.
Hybrid Cloud
In hybrid cloud computing, the on-premise infrastructure or private cloud infrastructure is combined with a public cloud. This combination allows data sharing between two different environments. Hybrid cloud computing is suitable for businesses that have a pre-existing private cloud infrastructure and only want to migrate some of their services to a public cloud. A hybrid cloud joins two different cloud entities with an encrypted connection, making data highly portable.
● When to use it?
A hybrid cloud strategy is suitable in two major conditions:
- First, if you already have private cloud infrastructure, and you want to migrate partially or fully to a public cloud. To facilitate an easy transition, it is best to connect your private cloud to a public cloud and shift each service, one by one.
- Secondly, public cloud computing has several notable features. Most companies opt for hybrid computing if they want to use these features of public cloud computing while storing some sensitive data in-house, on the private cloud network.
● Advantages
- Highly reliable, as services can be distributed across multiple data centers, both private and public.
- Organizations can highly scale the public cloud infrastructure without exposing sensitive data to security risks.
- Supports effective cost management as high-security data can be privately secured while the rest of the processes and workloads can be spread across a comparatively inexpensive public cloud environment.
- Policy-driven deployment to easily divide the workload across private and public cloud infrastructure.
● Disadvantages
- There must be strong integration and compatibility between both the cloud infrastructure, but organizations lack any direct control over the public cloud infrastructure.
- Operating and managing an evolving combination of public and private cloud architecture creates an additional infrastructure complexity.
- The cost of managing, tracking, and toggling between two cloud infrastructures can be high.
Multi-Cloud
In a multi-cloud setting, applications use multiple cloud platforms and all the platforms deliver a specific service based on their strength. The target is to achieve the enterprise’s end goal with a combination of public, private, and hybrid clouds, using different architectures like Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Multi-cloud is often misunderstood as a hybrid cloud, but hybrid cloud is an infrastructure while multi-cloud is a cloud computing strategy.
● When to use it?
Multi-cloud is beneficial in several cases like:
- If one cloud is offline, other active clouds can carry out the workload.
- Multi-cloud is highly flexible and customizable, as organizations can pick the best of all cloud types as per their requirement, budget allocation, and location.
● Advantages
- As no single cloud provider can do everything, the multi-cloud strategy is flexible and fine-tuned for every organization.
- Higher availability as regional cloud providers closer to the users can host their workload. This causes a significant reduction in response time.
- In a failover condition, multi-cloud has higher data availability and system support.
● Disadvantages
- Vendor lock-in is a major issue as the data is stored in different data centers, each with its own services for configuration, management, and monitoring.
- Issues with identity and authentication services that work across multiple clouds so that your users do not have a separate set of credentials for every service.
So, which cloud environment should you choose?
All these discussions come to one final question — which cloud environment is ideal for you? The answer varies as per your individual needs, and cloud engineering experts like Trinus can help you make the right choice. Based on several factors, use cases, and limitations, most organizations can make the best out of all cloud infrastructures. Start by defining your goals, priority workload, and the pros and cons of each cloud infrastructure. With an intentional cloud strategy by Trinus, you can ace cloud computing for your organization.