A buzzword develops into a technology

Public cloud: Services and infrastructures are provided by a provider via the Internet. For example, Office 365 or Google Mail are obtained from a public cloud. A simple and cost-effective solution for SMEs. Attention: The location of the data can be anywhere in the world!

Public Cloud

In a public cloud, services and infrastructures are provided from outside the corporate data center via the Internet. For example, an SME can easily rent storage, processes and other services. This system has been widely used for years in the private environment, for example by various e-mail providers.

Such a service, provided by external resources via the Internet, is flexible and usually easy to use. Companies that want to bring a new service to market quickly, for example, only need to set up internal Compliance rules because they use data that is not closely linked to their own infrastructure and could therefore endanger other parts of the network. In addition, a public cloud allows computing power and storage to be paid for according to actual consumption. The main advantages of public cloud services include scalability and elasticity - a service provider that makes its services available to thousands of companies, for example, can operate more cost-effectively than if each company had to maintain its own services. It is easier to flexibly adapt leased capacity to changing workloads instead of maintaining it permanently - and often unnecessarily. Moreover, these costs are on an operational level and are not tied-up capital.

In addition to all these benefits, discussions around the public cloud include concerns about security, confidentiality and data control. When services are migrated to a public cloud, companies must accept that their applications can be hosted anywhere in the world - depending on where the provider's data center is located.

Private cloud: Especially for companies that work with very sensitive data or follow strict compliance guidelines, such as financial service providers, the private cloud is an attractive option. Companies retain full control over data and applications. Private cloud is preferably used by companies that have their own IT department, regard IT as a core competence and do not want to outsource.

Private Cloud

A private cloud allows internal IT services to operate within the firewall. Nevertheless, payloads can move flexibly between servers so that usage peaks can be absorbed or new applications can be implemented. Especially for companies that work with very sensitive data or follow strict compliance guidelines. A private cloud is often preferred for business-critical data because it gives companies full control over data and applications. In a typical private cloud environment, companies consolidate distributed IT resources and virtualize resources in the data center. This allows IT to manage infrastructure more cost-effectively while deploying services faster. Still, deploying a private cloud can negatively impact resources and processes. For example, when resources, applications and data are consolidated, they automatically move away from many users. Employees in branch offices increasingly have to work via the Wide Area Network (WAN) access data and services to get the information they need. The WAN therefore has to endure significantly more traffic, may become overloaded and can incur high costs.

An example of a private cloud solution that is very well suited for SMEs are Backup and Recovery to Cloud. All data is available to all authorized users at all times, and customers benefit from dynamic and flexible storage space management. High availability as well as data and process security are guaranteed. Customers avoid investing in their own infrastructure and do not take any technology risk.

Hybrid cloud: This allows companies to switch flexibly between two models and the different business conditions - depending on the services and infrastructures involved. The hybrid cloud is preferably used by companies that operate their own IT department. The hybrid cloud combines the advantages of both worlds and will become established in the medium term.

Hybrid Cloud

In many cases, a hybrid cloud, a mixture of the two cloud environments mentioned, is the best solution and is increasingly becoming the standard. Companies can thus flexibly switch between two models and the different business conditions - depending on the services and infrastructures involved. The challenge is that the uniformity of data can be lost and the administrative burden increases. Potential differences in platforms must be dealt with, be they user, security, process or reporting platforms.

As a composite architecture, a hybrid cloud must deal with other influences from both concepts: For example, applications from a public cloud are hosted anywhere in the world, while applications in a private cloud are concentrated in a small cluster of data centers and can cause bottlenecks.

Cloud services 

Regardless of which of these options a company chooses, optimizing the wide area network (WAN) is one way to benefit from the respective advantages in terms of cost, scalability and manageability, while ensuring high performance and transparency in order to be able to work productively. As cloud computing adoption continues, enterprises will become more familiar with their own needs and requirements to determine which option is best for them. Regardless of the choice, companies need to understand exactly what impact a wide variety of cloud services will have on their IT infrastructure and topology in order to ensure the necessary level of performance.

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