Cloud Computing technology splits itself into three different typologies: Public, Private and Hybrid. The typology selection depends a lot on the type of activity the company wants to develop, the data that are going to be treated, the requisites in terms of security and management necessities. All these three forms are the output of the Cloud evolutionary process.
At the beginning, only Public Cloud existed, but soon doubts and perplexities connected to security started to emerge. Consequently, the development process substantially moved to the Private Cloud that, from one hand resolved doubts connected to security, but on the other hand was less flexible and scalable than the Public Cloud. For this reason, the develop focused then on the Hybrid Cloud: the goal was just to use Public and Private Cloud pros, with a marginal increase of the management complexity. But the question is: “Which typology fits more our company?”. In this article, we will briefly describe the three Cloud types, by considering in which circumstances one is better that the others.
Public Cloud: it’s the one that fully resides on the internet. A lot of service providers provide storage services, computerized or applications like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud or Google Engine. This Cloud typology enhances companies to pay for what they actually use, with various offers with hourly or monthly rate. Furthermore, it is the ideal environment for services that need to quickly scale, that is, that need to immediately adapt to the demand increase or decrease. Public Cloud has also some limits connected to security dangers on data transfer on the internet, but also to the smaller control that companies have over the data center resources.
Private Cloud: it totally resides in the company. This type enhances a bigger control over the data center resources and has less risks connected to data, which remain in the company. The bigger risk of this type of Cloud is the high investment connected to the purchase of hardwares and softwares to realize a Private Cloud worthy of attention. Furthermore, this solution will convert into an operative and management process increase, with a work overcharge and a growth in the costs for the staff necessary to its management.
Hybrid Cloud: it was born in order to take advantage of Public and Private Cloud pros. The goal was to provide a transparent Cloud, where the company could manage resources, by migrating applications from the Private to the Public Cloud. The Hybrid solution is, therefore, realized as a combination of a Private solution and a Public one. The company, then, can use Private Cloud for all critical processes and take advantage of the Public Cloud for the others. Furthermore, the scalability can be realized by taking advantage of the Public component, so by basing on this in periods in which the request increases. The Hybrid Cloud is rather recent and this implies some risks connected to the little maturity on the market it has; in fact a few companies choose it. Moreover, there is also the problem connected to the security of data and services that are exchanged between Private and Public Cloud.
All the companies use Public Cloud services, i.e. Dropbox. A lot of them are judging a possible migration from Private to Hybrid Cloud, by maintaining the critical services on Private Cloud and taking advantage of the Public one for all the other services. Private, Public or Hybrid Cloud: which one fits more your company needs?
