Public or private cloud…or both?

The rise to prominence of cloud computing over the last decade has dramatically changed the way many businesses operate. Whilst there are some traditionalists that are still clinging to the old ways of working, many others have realised the benefits cloud computing can bring.

But what is the best option – public cloud, private cloud? Or is it possible to have both? 

Cloud computing – having the best of both worlds
When it comes to having the best of both worlds, in cloud computing that is now possible. We’ve recently built the world’s most powerful public computing infrastructure, an IaaS that allow businesses to process their big data faster and more effectively than any other means. Crucially, it can be both a private and public cloud at the same time.

Public clouds are perhaps slightly more associated with individuals, less likely to need the level of infrastructure and security offered by private clouds. However, businesses of all sizes still use public clouds for storage, online collaboration and much more. Essentially, public clouds service a number of clients using the same infrastructure and are popular because:

• They are scalable – applications that run on a public cloud can be scaled up or down according to need;
• They are cost effective – companies using a public cloud benefit from economies of scale. The cost of operating and managing resources is shared and components require less bespoke configuration.
• You only pay for what you use - public clouds use a pay-as-you-go model, where people pay only for what they use. Our IaaS for example, is paid for by the hour.
• They are reliable – with a public cloud there is no single point of failure. We use latest generation enterprise hardware from HP, providing customers with complete access to hardware specs.
• You can access them anywhere – public clouds are accessed via the internet, so location is no longer a barrier for access to IT infrastructure or documents.

Going private - the benefits of a private cloud
But for some organisations the public cloud carries a perceived privacy and security risk. This is a moot point but opting for a private cloud does mean that an organisation can use infrastructure dedicated only to their business. This means that they have to manage and integrate resources themselves, which can be costly and time consuming, but also allows a greater degree of privacy, security and control.

But for many organisations, the most suitable infrastructure could one that combines the flexibility and scalability of a public cloud, with the added protection for data that comes with a private cloud. That’s why we built our big data infrastructure to do just that.

Removing the hypervisor allows us to offer significantly more processing power than other public clouds, as a number of industry studies state. By utilising dedicated bare metal servers we provide unparalleled computing power but customers can use any hypervisor to build their own private cloud on top of our infrastructure, if they so wish.

That private cloud can also be scaled across our global network of datacenters - truly the best of both worlds for customers demanding privacy as well as performance.