Cloud: Public, Private, or Somewhere in Between?

Public and private clouds both have their advantages. To benefit from both of their strengths, many enterprises are choosing a hybrid cloud.

• Public and Private Cloud
• Why are Some Companies Choosing Hybrid?
• Optimizing Agility
• Maintaining Compliance
• Facilitating Partnerships
• Leveraging Real-Time Decisions
• Moving Forward with Cloud

Cloud is generally considered a solution that can help businesses control their expenses while giving them the agility to innovate and outmaneuver their competition. The question many organizations have is which type of cloud makes the most sense: public, private, or hybrid. Let’s look at general understandings of the public and private categories and why many enterprises are choosing the compromise of a hybrid.

Public and Private Cloud

Total expenditure on cloud infrastructure is projected at $38.2 billion this year by IDC. This technology is only continuing to grow, so businesses have options – it’s just a matter of deciding which route to take. It used to be that organizations would determine which one of those models made sense primarily based on their industry. Finance companies would generally choose private cloud hosting, for instance. By keeping their cloud in-house, they were able to retain full control of security parameters and know where data was at all times for easier compliance with regulations.

Public cloud server hosting, on the other hand, is unmatched when it comes to scalability, notes Sebastian Krause in CloudTech. “Scaling up or down can be done quickly, giving greater elasticity for unplanned projects or those that expand rapidly without warning,” he says. “On the flip side, there are concerns surrounding the security and privacy of data.”

Firms are increasingly realizing that regardless of the issues that have made them hesitate to adopt cloud (customization, privacy, compliance, etc.), hybrid cloud is able to meet both scalability and security needs at the same time. It’s not a matter of either/or; there is a middle ground.

Why are Some Companies Choosing Hybrid?

Hybrid cloud is becoming an increasingly common choice, especially in the enterprise setting. It is seen by many experts as a logical step from traditional computing, offering stronger flexibility and better UI alongside fuller compliance and data protection. Just how rapidly is this market expanding? Well, incredibly fast. In fact, Markets and Markets reports that hybrid cloud will grow from $33.28 billion to $91.74 billion between 2016 and 2021. That’s a breakneck CAGR of 22.5%.

Optimizing Agility

Businesses have to be able to adapt to meet the changing expectations of customers on a continual basis, notes Krause. “This requires a systematic and iterative approach to capitalising on a range of technologies’ capabilities – meaning fast, agile development is required,” he says. “A complete hybrid cloud portfolio enables businesses to place workloads where they make the most sense.”

A business can set up its infrastructure so that dedicated servers are utilized when their performance capabilities are needed. Also, it’s possible to incorporate apps and hardware that are already owned by the company.

Maintaining Compliance

One of the primary concerns about cloud is multi-tenancy. Businesses often face strict regulations, and meeting those parameters is mission-critical. The hybrid model provides the dedicated machines and network devices that allow for access restrictions and control over data placement as part of one unified infrastructure.

Facilitating Partnerships

The manner of IT investment is rapidly changing. Historically, companies have each kept their data under lock and key. Now, IT leaders are adopting solutions that allow them to collaboratively share data with external partners, and this shift is reliant on the characteristics of cloud.

However, Krause explains, it doesn’t always make sense to recode every app to suit cloud or place all data there. “Making it simple to migrate any existing enterprise data to the cloud to create efficient workflows with partners, yet keep other data if not needed for cloud operations on private servers,” he says, “is a massive benefit to large corporations.”

What’s particularly strong about the hybrid scenario is how rapidly the enterprise can contribute the desired information to these alliances.

Leveraging Real-Time Decisions

Businesses understand that our environment is being replicated as code, and cloud is the logical manner of delivery.

Hybrid cloud is a way that companies can make the most of the budget for their IT portfolio and expedite innovation through their apps. DevOps is able to program and deploy an app, add on instruction, or microservice in a setting that’s built for scaling, notes Krause. “Continuous innovation means being able to access data and analytics to extract deeper insights more quickly than ever before,” he says, “allowing businesses to get closer to their customers and make smarter decisions in real-time.”

Moving Forward with Cloud

Selecting the cloud model that’s right for a business will differ. This decision isn’t just technological but also involves support, cost, and the company’s goals. Many businesses have realized that the answer for them lies somewhere in the middle: hybrid.

Are you setting up a hybrid cloud for your business? At Atlantic.Net, our infrastructure allows you to provision cloud servers in seconds on a highly redundant hardware platform, pay only for what you use, and cancel anytime with no commitments. Contact us about VPS hosting and a hybrid cloud today.