Private vs Public — The cloud war

I recently started exploring the world of Microsoft Azure. It caught my attention lately because of a whopping 98% increase in Azure’s revenue while AWS posting a revenue growth of 45% in the same time-frame. However, it would be unwise to compare both on these numbers as Microsoft releases a combined revenue of its cloud solution that includes the already popular Office 365. None the less, Azure seems to be headed in the right direction.

This got me thinking, how does an organization decide on Public and Private cloud strategy?

Why Private cloud?

· Higher Data Security: Private clouds are isolated from the outside world which gives you a sense of increased security on your data.

· Improved performance: Hardware is optimized as per your application and would give you better performance.

Why public cloud?

In 2019 the world has seen an increase in adoption of public cloud and a decline in private cloud. The reason is simple, in public could computing you as a company pay for a service (Infrastructure or Software) as much as you use it and can smoothly scale up and down at a click of a button.

· Pay as you go: Unlike private cloud you don’t pay for an asset/resource when you don’t need it. You can always scale up during peak seasons and pay for the extra resource during that time and shed the extra fat when not required.

· Availability: Public clouds are more reliable in terms of availability because it’s present across geography and backup systems kicking in quickly in case of one or more data centers going down. This is a challenge with private cloud.

Does this mean the future of private cloud is bleak? The answer is no. Most companies are adopting a hybrid cloud model where they can harness the positives of both public and private cloud.

How to plan for a Hybrid cloud model?

We will not go for a step by step guide on how to plan for implementing/migrating to a hybrid cloud but will list few advantages that you can ponder over while developing a strategy.

· Cloud bursting: You always have the option to have your application hosted in private cloud and burst into a public cloud based on a scale up threshold.

· Safely manage security and speed: Segregate the data based on sensitivity and place highly sensitive data in private cloud and less sensitive ones in public. This balances the security and speed aspect.

· Cost effectiveness: There would always be a minimum setup that you would require round the year. This should be your private cloud setup so that you don’t have to change it that frequently. The extra scale up and isolated heavy computing should be delegated to public cloud.