Public Cloud vs. Private Cloud: Which Cloud Model Is Right For Your Business?
Businesses that have their sights set on the cloud are faced with a myriad of decisions. And among countless choices, perhaps one of the most critical of them is choosing the right type of cloud model.
For most, that means deciding between public cloud and private cloud platforms—or a mix of both. In fact, according to Flexera’s 2021 State of the Cloud Report, 97% of businesses utilize at least one public cloud, while 80% have at least one private cloud.
So, what do businesses need to consider when making their own cloud decisions? For starters, public cloud and private cloud platforms have significant cost, control, compliance and complexity differences—and it’s up to each IT team to assess its particular needs before landing on which is best. In this blog post, we’re lasering in on these two main deployment models, with the goal of helping you decide which option is the right fit for your business.
Public Cloud vs. Private cloud: What’s the Difference?
Here’s the 1,000-foot view: public clouds utilize shared infrastructure, while private clouds utilize an organization’s own infrastructure. But what does that differentiation mean for your business? Put simply, the public cloud gives you fast, easy and cost-effective access to cloud services, but you’re sharing compute with other users, and customization and control over underlying infrastructure is limited. On the other hand, the private cloud gives users solitary use of reserved compute along with more customization and control, but it comes at a price—it’s more expensive, and the deployment process is longer and more complex.
When it comes to comparing the public and private cloud, that’s just the very tip of the iceberg. Here is a more in-depth view of some of the main differences between each.
- Level of control: In the public cloud, you use whatever hardware and software is offered by your cloud service provider (CSP)—e.g., Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform. This frees you from the responsibility of infrastructure design and management, but the visibility into—and control over—the underlying components of your cloud environment can be limited. In the private cloud, however, you can customize and control compute, storage, networking and other infrastructure components to best meet the needs of your unique IT environment and business requirements—but this level of control comes at a price.
- Cost: When using the public cloud, you only pay for the CPU, storage or bandwidth that you use. So, if you use 100 gigabytes on a virtual machine (VM), you pay for only 100 gigabytes worth of usage. This can come with big cost savings, but it’s important to keep in mind that because spinning up resources in the public cloud can be done with the click of a button, it’s just as easy to lose control and visibility over your instances. Taking time to regularly monitor and optimize these resources, however, can help you keep costs under control. In a private cloud setting, because you are purchasing the infrastructure, you have to plan—and pay for—anticipated usage rather than your actual usage. This can be costly, especially if you overestimate the amount of capacity needed. For example, if you purchase a 10 terabyte back-end storage array, you always pay for those 10 terabytes—even if you’re only using 100 gigabytes of storage. It’s also important to keep in mind that there are additional costs associated with the ongoing maintenance of the private cloud environment.
- Number of users: The public cloud is multi-tenant (meaning multiple customers are using the same computing resources), while the private cloud is single-tenant (meaning only one customer is supported). In comparison to single-tenancy, multi-tenancy can mean a larger pool of resources since it’s designed for mass consumption. Single-tenancy, on the other hand, gives customers the ability to make significant customizable changes to its software—something that’s difficult for multi-tenancy users to achieve since their resources are shared among other tenants.
- Deployment: Public clouds reside in giant data centers where infrastructure is already in place—so deployment is fast and easy (think of it as a giant apartment complex with prepared floor plans). In fact, in the time it takes you to read this blog, you could log into your CSP portal and create a web or database server. Private clouds, on the other hand, could run on-premises at your company or on-premises at a cloud provider like Navisite. While automation has made the design and deployment of private clouds much faster than in years past, the process still takes longer than getting started in the public cloud—a matter of days or weeks instead of minutes.
- Management, maintenance and support: CSPs are largely responsible for ongoing management, maintenance and support of their customers’ public cloud environments. If you opt for the private cloud, these functions fall on your team—so it’s important to make sure you have enough resources on staff to handle them, day in and day out.
- Security: When it comes to security in the public cloud, you’re often at the mercy of your CSP’s experts and tools—and that can come with some major advantages. By relying on your CSP for security, you have access to entire teams solely devoted all day, every day to protecting the business and its customers from risk. In the private cloud, you have control over the security, audit tools and strategies you implement, which is helpful if you have certain industry regulations that you need to meet or specific solutions you have to use. The downside here is that not all companies have the required resources and budget to devote to security, because it’s just one of the many functions that their IT teams are responsible for managing.
Which Deployment Is Right For You?
There is no magic formula that dictates which deployment model is best for your business. Instead, the answer largely depends on your IT environment, business demands and future goals. Generally, the public cloud is an ideal option for companies that want to get out of their data center quickly, easily and cost-effectively. The private cloud might work better for organizations that need to maintain control over their infrastructure to meet specific compliance requirements.
It’s important to note that the decision doesn’t have to be between public or private—you can also aim for a unique combination of both. More organizations are adopting a multi-cloud strategy to meet the needs of different workloads. For example, a company might have its enterprise applications running in the private cloud for licensing or support reasons, while running ancillary components (such as file servers and Active Directory servers) on the public cloud. In fact, according to the Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report, 92% of respondents reported having a multi-cloud strategy.
Navisite’s dedicated cloud experts are here to help you throughout your cloud journey. Whether you choose a public, private or hybrid cloud solution, our on-demand webinar, Quick Wins and Practical Moves That Will Get You to Cloud Success, will show you how to achieve immediate and long-term gains in your new cloud environment.