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Tuesday, 1 July 2014 ehdf

Decoding Your Cloud Computing Options

Cloud computing, also known simply as ‘the cloud’, is an IT service intended for business use for the delivery of on-demand services such as CRM, off-site storage, hosted email solutions, secure web portals, etc. over the internet on a pay-per-use basis. Instead of spending upfront on hardware and software, businesses have access to the same resources over a shared model.

Because services are provided over the internet, the location of the service provider may not be important. Businesses can access their services through a secure device such as a workstation, laptop or smartphone and a web browser. Depending on the organizational structure and the provisioning location, cloud services can be deployed in two ways:
•Public Cloud
•Private Cloud

Public Cloud:
It is a feature rich, multi-tenant and on-demand cloud environment that can be customized to meet IT needs. Public clouds are owned and operated by service providers that use them to offer rapid access to affordable computing resources for other organisations or individuals. With public cloud services, users don’t need to purchase hardware, software or supporting infrastructure, which is owned and managed by service providers. Typically, customers on public clouds share the same infrastructure pool with limited configuration options. Public cloud services are ideal for organizations that don’t need very high levels of security or management support with the infrastructure.

It is ideal for businesses experiencing rapid growth, organizations with heavy dynamic traffic, companies that need to test and develop applications and those that need incremental capacity (the ability to add compute resources for peak times).

Private Cloud:
It is a single-tenant cloud environment where the hardware, storage and network are dedicated to a single organization. The computing infrastructure is dedicated to a particular organization and not shared with other organizations. Private clouds are more expensive and more secure when compared to public clouds. Hosted Private Clouds are externally hosted by a service provider that facilitates an exclusive cloud environment with full guarantee of privacy. This is recommended for organizations that prefer not to use public cloud infrastructure due to the risks associated with the sharing of physical resources.

Private clouds are generally preferred by mid to large size enterprises because they meet the security and compliance requirements of these larger organizations and their customers. It is ideal for businesses where there is a strict requirement that data should obey the rules of various regulatory standards (such as healthcare and pharmaceutical industries) and companies that need data sovereignty but want cloud efficiencies.

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