Discussing Private & Public Cloud

In my last post I explained in detail that what are Public and Private cloud. My team have some more points in mind discussed below.

Cloud computing is a style of computing whereby, to qualify as a cloud, the offered services should adhere to a combination of attributes, not just one. Stronger examples of cloud services will adhere to more attributes of cloud computing than will weaker ones. Consumers and providers of cloud services must examine these attributes to determine whether the services will deliver the expected outcome.

The greatest differences between private and public clouds reside in the level of support available, upfront costs, the extent to which the infrastructure can be isolated and secured from external threats, and the ability to customize the service delivery and comply with regulatory compliance as we will see in greater detail below. As public clouds are built atop of shared and virtualized infrastructures, there are generally more limited customization possibilities than with private clouds. Private clouds built atop of dedicated servers, storage and networks can more easily meet the enterprise's security policies, governance and best practice requirements.

But private cloud computing should be viewed as a continuous evolution trend towards a rationalization of the datacenter and improved operational efficiency rather than as a discontinuous innovation. This trend is not new in ICT as it already started with the consolidation of the business applications through virtualization. Thus, private cloud computing is pushing these rationalization and efficiency objectives one step further by enabling a service-based delivery approach for the firm's ICT resources and charge consumers (i.e. business units) on a per usage basis. However, private cloud computing does not bring several of the key business benefits of cloud computing itself, namely the elimination of an upfront commitment, the transformation of capital expenses into operational expenses, and the availability of an unlimited amount of ICT resources at a snap of a finger. Small and medium businesses that do not have a critical mass of compute, storage and network resources to share in a pool, as well as the human capital and expertise to build and maintain a cloud-based service delivery model, will not be able to get the expected economies of scale and operational efficiency promises of cloud computing.

As a general rule of thumb, it is wise to avoid endless discussions about what is and what is not cloud computing and focus on examining how much a given provider can deliver of the value proposition of cloud computing through the support of its fundamental characteristics.