Public Cloud vs Private Cloud

Prod vs Test / Dev & Rent vs Invest

Despite the promises of what the Public Cloud offers in terms of flexibility and availability, there are more and more companies switching back to on premise / owned data centre. The reason invoked is mainly for cost saving. Every companies are different and so the reasoning differs from company to company and their choices are perfectly valid whether they prefer the Public Cloud or not. At the end of the day, it is about balancing the different key elements and take a decision that reflects a preference. The better choice for them.

Often one of the main argument that motivates the switch to the Public Cloud is cost. Obviously they are other very good arguments such as flexibility and availability, but cost is an important one.

Do you save money if you switch to the Public Cloud? Well, it depends.

Are we talking about production, testing or development?

The requirements are obviously different. The scalability or the availability for instance are less important for testing and development environment.

The Public Cloud minimizes up-front IT infrastructure costs. But at the end of the day is about comparing Renting vs Investing.

Will the Public Cloud become ultra dominant?

Nobody knows but they are companies like us that prefer to:

• Invest rather than rent
• Own their infrastructure
• Be less dependent as possible
• Cost saving for testing and development

You can still get most of the benefits of the Public Cloud by running your own Cloud even if you are a small company. There are alternatives such MicroCloud (https://canonical.com/microcloud) or Personal Cloud (https://aprilsoftware.github.io/personal-cloud/).