Cloud Types

Cloud computing is typically classified in two ways:

1. Location of the cloud computing
2. Type of services offered

There are 3 types of cloud and they are - Public , Private and Hybrid

Public Clouds

The most used type is the Public cloud. This provides the services and infrastructure off-site over the internet. This offers great level of efficiency in shared resources. computing infrastructure is hosted by the cloud vendor at the vendor location. The customer has no visibility and control over where the computing infrastructure is hosted. 

A public cloud is the obvious choice when

1) applications that are used by many people like e-mail etc

2) You need incremental capacity (the ability to add computer capacity for peak times).

3) when doing collaborative projects

One major drawback with this is the security and reliability.

Private Clouds

This is the one in which services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network. These clouds offer the greatest level of security and control, but they require the company to still purchase and maintain all the software and infrastructure, which reduces the cost savings

A private cloud is the obvious choice when

1) Control and security of the application data is critical

2) Your business is part of an industry that must conform to strict security and data privacy issues

3) Company has the budget to run next generation cloud data centers

Hybrid Cloud

This is the combination of both Public and private clouds. This allows that each aspect of the business in kept in most efficient environment possible. The one major drawback with this is security platforms that allows the communication between the 2 types.

Here are a couple of situations where a hybrid environment is best.

1) applications are being deployed in the Saas Platform but are concerned about the security and data. The vendor creates a private cloud in your company firewall and provide you with a virtual private network for additional security

2) Services when offered to multiple markets like public cloud to interact with clients but to keep their data secured with a private cloud

The main drawback with this is the management . This type of cloud computing become much more complex when you need to manage private, public, and traditional data centers all together. we will need to add capabilities for combining these environments.