The Difference Between Private And Public Cloud
Private Cloud
A Private Cloud, as the name suggests, is a Cloud infrastructure used by a single business. It can be a server onsite, or it could be physically located elsewhere. But, fundamentally, it’s there to serve the needs of just one business or organization. There are a few advantages of this setup. One, you don’t have to share hardware resources with anyone else. Second, it’s extensively customizable. You can set up everything to match your exacting requirements.
However, there is one big problem with Private Cloud. It’s expensive. In fact, Private Cloud is so expensive that small and medium-size businesses rarely use them. Also, with more and more large corporations shifting to Private Cloud, the reason for higher costs is obvious.
You need to spend on the hardware initially, which isn’t cheap. To add to that, you need to buy licenses for the applications that are needed to set up your Cloud. Then you’ll have to pay for the setting up itself. This includes installation and configuration of operating systems, allocation of resources, creation of a network, implementation of a robust backup and data recovery plan, and so much more. And all this is just the initial expenditure for setup.
Then there’s maintenance. You are going to need an IT team to maintain the network. From time to time, you’ll also have to shell out for hardware. And maintenance isn’t a one-time cost. It’s repetitive and continuous. Thanks to the costs of running a Private Cloud, the only people who use it these days are government agencies, a few large companies, major social media platforms, and financial institutions that have business-critical operations that need complete control over their network environment.
Public Cloud
A Public Cloud refers to a Cloud infrastructure where a third-party hosting provider owns, operates, and maintains the servers. Storage, resources, and hosting are then offered as a service to the customers. One important point to reiterate here is that customers have no ownership of servers and neither do they have any obligation of maintenance. It’s all done by the company that owns the servers.
While there are many different types of hosting methods, multitenancy is a cornerstone of Public Cloud. It’s a setup where multiple customers can share the resources of a single server. This way, pricing for everyone comes down, and thus it becomes a viable option of small to medium-sized businesses. It’s one of the most popular ways in which Public Cloud is implemented.
Difference Between Private and Public Cloud Setup
A simple way of trying to understand the difference between Public and Private Cloud is by comparing it with houses. Private Cloud is like buying a house. It’s yours and yours alone. You can customize it the way you want. However, a house is more expensive to buy, the responsibility of maintaining is entirely yours, and all of that costs more money.
Public Cloud is like renting a room in an apartment. Yes, you have to share the space, but you still have a place of your own. Costs are shared, so it’s relatively inexpensive, and what’s more, you don’t have to worry about the overall maintenance. It’s done by someone else.
Characteristics of Public Cloud
Public Cloud is generally delivered as a service. The fundamental idea here is that you don’t have to buy server infrastructure, but can use them via the internet. To that end, there are three important delivery mechanisms of the Public Cloud:
- IaaS — Infrastructure as a Service
IaaS is a type of service where you are offered the infrastructure on which work can be done. This means that you get compute, network, and storage. Compute involves processors, GPUs, or HPCs for all your computing needs. Network connects the compute, storage, and the end-user. Finally, storage is obviously for storing data. It could be a file, block, or object storage.
IaaS is one of the simplest types of Public Cloud offering. You don’t have to buy the physical infrastructure. They are delivered. You use this infrastructure to build your programs or services or applications.
IaaS is generally intended to be used by System Admins.
Popular examples include Google Computing Engine, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) - PaaS — Platform as a Service
PaaS is a complete environment. You have compute, storage, and networks — yes. But in addition, you also get a bunch of development tools, DBMS (Database Management Systems), BI (Business Intelligence) and so on.
It’s easy to think of PaaS this way: It’s designed for you to design apps on it.
PaaS is a platform on which you can develop software or applications. They are typically intended to be used by developers.
Popular examples include Google App Engine and Openshift. - SaaS — Software as a Service
The best way to explain SaaS is by giving you examples. YouTube is SaaS, and so is Google Docs or even Email services.
SaaS, as the name implies, is a complete software that runs off a Cloud infrastructure. It’s designed for the end-user, and everything is done. It’s a complete package upon which there really is no scope for the end-user to work on.
It’s intended to be used by pretty much anyone.
Public Cloud in Web Hosting
The Public Cloud infrastructure has evolved from a brave, new and radical concept to a general and accepted reality. It has proven to be reliable, safe, incredibly agile and performance-oriented. And, the biggest gainer of the evolution of Public Cloud has been the web hosting space.
With the growth of Public Cloud, the shared cloud storage became a reality. While ‘moving to the Cloud’ was an attractive mantra, the costs were not affordable to all. With the advent of Public Cloud and its subsequent application in web hosting, Cloud became affordable. Many Cloud web hosting solutions supplement the robust processing setup of the server with the security of a Cloud storage solution.
Conclusion
As seen above, Cloud, both Private and Public, have been instrumental in bringing Cloud-based solutions to the people. While Private Cloud is synonymous with privacy, control and customizability, Public Cloud is accessible, easy to set up and affordable.
So if you are a large organization that needs to own its Cloud setup and get complete control, privacy, and ability to tweak the settings as per their needs, Private Cloud is for you. However, if you are a smaller organization, and do not need the exclusivity, you can opt for Public Cloud for its pocket-friendly solutions.
