Home > Cloud Vs. Cloud: Which Side Are You On?

The jury is in, and cloud computing is here to stay. So the question for organizations both large and small is not: “to cloud or not to cloud,” but rather, when and what kind — public or private?

The battle is raging, but peace may soon be at hand. Is one cloud better than the other, what’s the difference, and can you have the best of both worlds?

Cloud computing (a.k.a. grid or utility computing) has matured to the point where most organizations are currently in the cloud to some degree, or are contemplating making the move. The benefits in terms of savings (fewer hardware and software investments), scalability, and agility are well documented. So the decision to head for the cloud is virtually a no-brainer — especially for companies that don’t already have enterprise-level datacenters with the requisite compute, storage, networking, and operating system resources. Deciding what kind of cloud, however, requires a bit more brainpower.

The Public Cloud
The public cloud provides commercial services like Google Apps, storage, sales force automation, and other suitable Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications over the Internet in real time. By sharing IT infrastructure with others and benefiting from the flexible distribution of resources, companies realize significant savings and faster time-to-market for deploying new services and bringing proprietary apps on line. The downside? By throwing in with the public cloud, you have less control. Which is why some IT managers are looking to bring the benefits of an external cloud in house by delivering metered services exclusively via internal resources.

The Private Cloud
A private cloud takes all the upside of its public counterpart and parks it inside the corporate datacenter. According to Wikipedia, it “emulates cloud computing on private networks…and offers the ability to host applications or virtual machines in a company’s own set of hosts.” A private cloud provides “the benefits of utility computing — shared hardware costs, the ability to recover from failure, and the ability to scale up or down depending upon demand.” The key technologies required are virtualization for scalability, flexibility, and maximum hardware utilization; automation for fluid workload provisioning; and, authentication to restrict unauthorized access. But unlike with a public cloud, you have to build and manage the infrastructure yourself, and thus, won’t see the upfront savings on capital outlays and management expenses that come with a publicly shared resource pool. Since economy has been a key driver behind the attraction of cloud computing, why would you want to bring the cloud inside?

Source: ComputerWorld

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