Public & Private Cloud Computing

Abstract

Public & Private Cloud are the most common terminologies floating around in this new IT buzz called Cloud Computing. There is no denying that the use of Cloud is on the rise. Though it boasts a variety of benefits there is positive concerns that are hampering its adoption. In this whitepaper they have discussed about the various types of Clouds available to your disposal & why ought to you select. They have also discussed about the key concerns of cloud adoption & the way you can minimize the risks.

Types of Cloud

There are types of cloud available: Public Cloud, Private Cloud & Hybrid Cloud. Public cloud computing, what they listen to the most is where Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, & Google Apps come to mind. But whether it is the right model depends on the criticality of your application & infrastructure requirements. It may work for a substantial number of your computing needs, but in the event you feel more comfortable to have your computing resources inside your own firewalls, then private cloud is the right answer. That is what enterprises tend towards when they have a large user base & they are concerned about the knowledge, security & latency.

Let us now look in to each of these clouds after the other:

1. Public Cloud - The seller hosts the infrastructure in his remote own location & the customer has no access, visibility or control of it. It is shared by multiple organizations. It definitely reduces the overhead of infrastructure management but at the cost of control.
   
2. Private Cloud - It is owned by a single organization & is not shared by somebody else. They are dedicated resources & may be hosted on-premise or off-premise in a third party seller location. Though it gives you a control over the resources, it leaves you with an overhead to manage it.
   
3. Hybrid Cloud - A Hybrid Cloud is a mix of Private & Public. Such as, when an organization makes use of a Private Cloud for secure applications & a Public Cloud in the work of peak load, the usage is called a Hybrid Cloud. Though a Hybrid Cloud gives you the best of both the services, yet you require selecting between a Public or Private cloud for the base of your operations.

Here is a picture that shows a flowchart between public, private, and hybrid cloud computing:

Public Cloud Interfaces Public cloud offers virtualized resources as a service, enabling the deployment of a complete IT infrastructure without the associated capital costs, paying only for the used capacity. Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, ElasticHosts, GoGrid, iWeb & Rackspace are examples of commercial cloud providers of elastic capacity. They also offer a public interface for remote management of virtualized server instances within their proprietary infrastructure.