Cloud Types: Public, Private, and Hybrid
Before you move forward with an IT project, conduct a proper assessment by taking a look at current objectives, capabilities, and conducting a cost/benefits analysis for the cloud. Then you can determine the resources your company needs and whether or not some or all of them are available on the cloud. There are three main types of deployment and each comes with its own unique benefits and tradeoffs.
Public Cloud
With the public cloud, IT services are accessible publicly over the internet. These services are typically free or subscription-based where the client (your company) pays for resources they’ve consumed.
The vendor is in charge of the developing, managing, and maintenance of its computing resources, which are pooled and shared with multiple clients.
Finally, this option is popular because the services are highly flexible, scalable, and can be low-cost.
Private Cloud
Instead, companies create and manage their own computing resources, privately delivered across their own secure and private network. The primary benefit of private is their customizability specifically to fit the needs and wants of a company. These can be local or offsite with third-party data center providers. The greater personalization and increased set-up time usually entail a higher setup fee and greater maintenance costs.
Hybrid Cloud
These are a mix of private and public cloud types distributed across public and private data centers, hybrid services are especially reliable.
They offer greater flexibility to your company. You can even move applications and data between your public and private servers if desired. This cloud type is not cheap, however. Businesses typically use hybrid environments when they’re in a situation that involves sensitive data that needs private storage but they want to save on costs.
Types of Cloud Services
Public resources can be delivered in a variety of service models, depending on who is responsible for setup and maintenance.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
With SaaS, your company’s applications and computing resources are with a third party. Many SaaS applications are able to run directly from your web browser, eliminating the need for downloads or installations.
Delivery — IT staff will be free of installation or download to individual workstations.
Advantages — Time and money for installing, managing, and upgrading of software.
Characteristics — Accessible over the internet, hosted remotely, managed from a central location, and you won’t be responsible for any updates.
Use Case? — SaaS is for startups and small businesses that want to avoid having to deal with server issues. Second, it’s useful for certain short-term tasks such as virtual team collaboration or online taxes. For example, SaaS is one of the most common delivery models for many popular business applications such as Zendesk, Intuit, Salesforce, and Microsoft 365.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
To define PaaS, most of your company’s services are with a third party, but not all. First, PaaS is useful for developers because it gives them a framework to build upon, which they can use to create custom applications. Second, developers manage their applications, while the cloud provider handles the servers, storage, and networking.
Delivery — PaaS offers a platform for the creation of software; the platform itself is what’s over the web.
Advantages — Some of the main advantages of PaaS include its scalability, accessibility, and simplicity; it’s easy to migrate over to a hybrid model allowing developers to customize apps without worrying about software maintenance.
Characteristics — A PaaS is easily accessible to a large number of users, is on virtualization technology, and will integrate databases and web services.
Use Case? — When your company needs customized applications or when it needs to quickly develop and deploy an app. It’s then useful for situations where multiple developers are working on the same project. Some popular examples of PaaS companies include Windows Azure, Heroku, OpenShift, and the Google App Engine.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
IaaS provides your company with all the technologies and capabilities of a traditional data center without the need to physically maintain or manage actual hardware. Second, with IaaS, most computing resources are managed by the user, allowing your business to buy resources on-demand and as needed.
Delivery —Computing infrastructure (including storage, servers, network, and OS) via virtualization technology. Your organization typically gains access through an application programming interface (API) or a dashboard.
Advantages — IaaS is the most flexible. It allows for hardware and resource purchases to be based on consumption and necessity. Your company retains complete control over your infrastructure.
Characteristics — Common characteristics include its highly scalable services, incredible flexibility, and consumption-based costs. Resources are available as a service and your organization retains complete control over the infrastructure.
Use Case? — Startups and smaller companies that can’t afford to have their own physical data centers and larger enterprises that want to pay only for what they consume prefer this model. Second, it’s useful when a company needs the ability to scale and adapt quickly to changing needs.
Some common examples of IaaS include Cisco Metacloud, DigitalOcean, Linode, and Rackspace, to name a few. We help businesses make the transition as smooth as possible with Managed IT and Network Services.
Your business is unique, and the cloud services you decide to go with should reflect that. We’ll help you make smart decisions that lead to a worry-free experience.