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Cloud Computing can be split into two main categories – Public Cloud and Private Cloud.  If you would like to know more on the Cloud, please take a look at our earlier blog What are cloud-hosted applications and what do they mean for my business?

This blog explains the difference between the Public and Private Cloud, and identifies the pros and cons of each:

Public Cloud

A public cloud uses the Internet to access computer services e.g. applications, data or email. The Cloud provider bears the entire cost of the infrastructure, and the equipment is stored in secure data centres. A public cloud provider will charge on a monthly basis according to the volume of data transmitted and the bandwidth used.

Pros – cost efficiency, short-term commitment, faster to deploy, top providers include support

Cons – one size fits all approach, relinquish control

Private Cloud

A private cloud uses virtualisation technology to provide a similar function to a public cloud. The main difference is that a private cloud is owned and managed in-house. Suppliers of hardware to create a private cloud include Dell, HP, IBM & NetApp.

Pros – ease of customisation

Cons – expensive to deploy and maintain, hardware will have a maximum five-year life cycle.

Any cloud based system needs to have redundancy built into it in order to maintain business continuity.  A public cloud provider will use multiple servers/hardware to allow fail-over in the case of any issues and replication of the data to a second data centre to allow for any catastrophic disaster recovery. Anyone thinking of installing their own private cloud needs to build in redundancy and business continuity.

For more advice on using Public Cloud or setting up your own Private Cloud, please contact us at contact@hduk.co.uk or call our friendly team on 01883 582381.