What is the difference between a private cloud and a public cloud?

Migration with all services and data storage to the cloud is a common trend today. Affecting companies of all industries, whether very small or large corporations. However, before you choose the service that will be best for your company, you should familiarize yourself with the basic differences between private cloud, public cloud or hybrid cloud.

Each of these solutions has its own advantages and disadvantages. Which one you should use depends on many factors. Everything you need to make such a decision will be explained in the following article. With this knowledge you will make the optimal decision – match the cloud and its provider to your business needs. A good choice means reliable operation, data security and often considerable financial savings. The number of cloud providers around the world is huge, and they range from global giants to local companies operating in the Polish market. You can easily choose between them after reading the following few paragraphs. Since migrations between providers are quite cumbersome and time-consuming, it’s better to decide right away on a good company with services that fit your business.

The cloud what is it?

Starting with the basics, cloud computing in English, referred to as cloud computing, means placing the resources necessary to store data, perform calculations, provide services and similar things on computers separate from those used directly by the company’s employees. Such serving servers can belong to you – then we talk about private cloud or be shared then we talk about public cloud. Centralizing everything in one place with access via the Internet saves a lot of money and ensures the stability of all services. Today, most services available online are implemented in this model. It provides security and continuity of services at a much higher level than other approaches.

Private cloud – advantages and disadvantages

Private cloud, as already mentioned, means that you own it, that is, you yourself have to buy the appropriate equipment. This can be either a server set up directly on your company’s premises, providing services inside a private network or the Internet, or a physical server, located in a data center operated by an external company. Both of these solutions have their advantages and some disadvantages. If the equipment is operated directly by your company then you have to hire specialists to take care of it and respond to failures or threats at any time of the day or night – year round. Especially for smaller companies, this can and – often does – pose an insurmountable firewall. For that you have full control over your server, data and service operation. If you are processing secret data inside your company that cannot leave it, this is the most secure solution.

However, if you want to save on IT staff and get much higher stability and reliability then you can place the server in an external data center. Most such companies already offer the hardware you need, which you can buy or rent just for yourself. This activity is referred to as IaaS – Infrastructre as a Service – infrastructure as a service. The customer of such a data center service gets full access to its physical server and is responsible for its software and configuration itself.

This means that you can use any software there also one created specifically for your needs. The data center only provides you with a secure place to set it up and access to the Internet. This relieves you from maintaining a secure, air-conditioned room with emergency power and access to several Internet connections. Only a cloud server placed in such a way will ensure continuous and uninterrupted accessibility to its resources.

The biggest drawback of all private clouds is that they are less scalable than public clouds. If your business is growing or needs more resources only periodically, it will be much easier for you to use a public cloud. In a private cloud, you need to buy more physical hardware units to increase its capacity. This will take a lot of time, and today’s needs can change very dynamically, and you may suffer financial losses through shortages of data or services.

Public cloud – advantages and disadvantages

The public cloud, or public cloud, has many advantages over the private cloud. First and foremost is its scalability. Here, the hardware does not belong to you, but to the company operating it, which rents you its computing power and data space. This gives you access to the fastest and largest servers that can handle the biggest spikes in load, if needed. When your business grows in scope, you won’t have to do any physical work either, just perhaps switch to a higher-end plan that offers more capacity and more computing power. External data centers also usually offer much better access to resources through the network. Good units of this type have several independent connections to the Internet, as well as backup units in the building or entire duplicate centers in another location. No small or even medium-sized company can provide such a standard on its own. Public cloud provisioning can be based on two models:

• SaaS – Software as a Service;
• Paas – Platform as a Service.

Saas is the easiest service for cloud customers to use. Here you simply get access to networked software that runs on virtual computers. You, for your part, simply use it, without dealing with upgrades, versions and all the administration of a number of programs. You use as many resources as you need and don’t have to worry about running out of them.

Paas is a service where you have access to virtual computers over the Internet, but here you can install your own software. This increases the ability to tailor the service to your specific needs, but requires hiring expert people in-house to handle this. They will be the ones responsible for configuring the programs, updating them and working with each other.

Hybrid cloud – advantages and disadvantages

The hybrid cloud, or hybrid cloud, is a combination of the two approaches outlined above. Here, confidential data that should not leave the company’s premises is stored and processed on an internal server and, for example, mail or website maintenance is moved to a public external cloud. In this way, it is possible to take advantage of the benefits of both versions of the cloud. Thus, the hybrid cloud perfectly protects private and confidential data and provides scalability and free access from all over the world to other services and resources. The disadvantages of such a solution are, of course, the cost and its complexity, which can result in various problems in its operation or in the cooperation of one part with another.

Multi-cloud – advantages and disadvantages

Multi-cloud is a way to make yourself even more secure and confident that everything will work under all conditions, as it should. The term means using two or more public clouds, from different companies providing them. However, such gaining of stability or combining the capabilities of different solutions means serious financial costs. Therefore, a multi-cloud solution is used quite rarely.

Cloud services – what to choose?

Which cloud you should use depends mainly on the size of your business and its nature. A private cloud requires a sizable outlay for its maintenance, but for that it provides the highest control over data. Therefore, it is used by companies and institutions that are required to do so by law to ensure the protection of their resources. For example, entities covered by the Financial Supervisory Commission are subject to special regulations – the law does not prohibit them from using public clouds, but imposes many obligations on providers of services intended for the financial sector.

Public cloud services are used by most smaller and medium-sized companies. This is the most convenient and cheapest option for such businesses. It’s very easy to expand these services as the business grows, and it doesn’t require maintaining a whole staff of expert employees. Large organizations often combine these two methods and create a hybrid cloud. However, this is a solution for larger players who need just such an operation.

Cloud services – summary

Choosing cloud services tailored to your specific business is not a simple thing. The best thing to do is to use the services of professional companies that will take care of advising you on what you should order to make everything work as easily and at the lowest possible cost. You should certainly take a look at the offerings of Polish companies such as kru.pl, which offer cloud services for businesses and companies both micro and much larger. These include:

• website hosting;
• corporate mail;
• VPS servers;
• domains;
• SSL security certificates.

The prices of the various services are competitive to those offered by the global giants of the market. If you need a stable Internet connection, check out the website of the company ith.eu. There you will find cloud services, symmetrical Internet connections up to 1 Gbps with up to 5 public IP addresses or VPN (Virtual Private Network). Use Polish service providers, then you gain confidence that your data is not stored in remote areas of the world, and all services comply with Polish laws and regulations. Research shows that Polish companies are most likely to use Polish providers, and this is a fully understandable trend. Lower prices and better adaptation to the domestic market, causes their advantage over foreign competitors.