Public, Private, or Hybrid Cloud - What’s right for your organization?

Have your organization’s data management and computing needs outgrown your hardware? Are you ready to make the move to a cloud computing environment? Choosing and implementing a cloud strategy can be a complex undertaking. The potential for flexibility, scalability, and accessibility increases dramatically when you add a cloud computing element to your computing systems. We’ve compiled some pros and cons for the various cloud computing options available to help you choose the option that works best for your IT organization.

Public Vs. Private Vs. Hybrid

In practice, public and private clouds function very differently from one another while achieving similar outcomes. Both have benefits and drawbacks and many organizations find a sweet spot by implementing both in a hybrid cloud strategy.

No two organizations have the same needs or pre-existing infrastructure. Your cloud strategy should be customized to your organization.

Public Cloud

Public cloud solutions are available from multiple vendors via the public internet. That makes them flexible and affordable but can reduce their security.

Benefits

• Requires no capital investment.
• The cloud provider is responsible for all management, maintenance, security, and upgrades.
• As more and more mission-critical applications, services, and sensitive data is stored in the cloud, it becomes increasingly important to ensure your cloud solution is available 24/7. In the event of a natural disaster or cyberattack, public clouds are more resilient because of their built-in redundancy and the ability to absorb large amounts of traffic in a DDoS attack.
• A simple-to-implement first move away from owning your own hardware.
• Cloud-based managed services are all about efficient power usage. To learn more about reducing your IT carbon footprint, read last month's blog post.

Drawbacks

• Elements of security are typically provided by third-party cloud service providers. Depending on the industry and type of information stored in a public cloud, there may not be enough privacy and security policies in place.
• Public clouds often have a large capacity, but the ability to expand on-demand largely depends on the service provider.
• Reversibility is more challenging. When migrating infrastructure from one cloud to another, the costs involved are often underestimated.

Private Cloud 

Designed for more concise needs. A private cloud offers the flexibility and accessibility of public cloud services and the security of owning the hardware on which they run. This can be particularly valuable if your organization has sensitive data that needs to be stored and shared.

Benefits

• You own, manage, update and upgrade your cloud ecosystem, protecting it all with your firewall and security solutions. If your business requires more security than industry standards this is your best option.
• The security tools available with a private cloud include greater levels of authentication, API-enabled production, additional layers of automation, and the potential for scalability if required.
• In strictly regulated industries, such as finance and healthcare, a private cloud is a compliance necessity.

Drawbacks

• You need to hire or contract knowledgeable IT managers to set up and maintain infrastructure.
• You need a physical on-site data center that requires maintenance and accrued energy bills.
• Private clouds have the ability to spread the workload over multiple servers but are limited by the amount of server space a company owns or operates.

Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud blends the best of both public and private cloud solutions. You are responsible for managing how the two services interact. Hybrid cloud computing is becoming more popular as organizations work to support remote workers while maintaining security and control over their data and computing resources. Hybrid clouds can increase the complexity of cloud computing management, though.

• A hybrid strategy can help diversify data storage, protecting assets in the event of a disaster or attack.
• You can scale at your own pace.
• Hybrid solutions often are the most cost-efficient form of cloud computing for a company.

How Velocity Tech Solutions can help

Velocity Tech Solutions provides virtualization and cloud computing services in partnership with the leading players in the world, including Zadara, VMWare, Microsoft, and Veeam (virtualization). We can help you manage remote work environments for your employees, expand your technology capabilities and save IT space and hardware costs. Our cloud computing and virtualizations services are customizable to fit any data center size and IT budget. Our experts can help you navigate the noise of the digital age by bringing you the most efficient solution, making your business more agile and cost-effective.

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