Cloud Hosting

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Public cloud describes IaaS services like Alibaba Elastic Compute, Amazon AWS EC2, Digital Ocean Droplets, Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines and Google Compute Engine, to name a few. The providers all have multiple customers and deliver their services over the internet. Public cloud customers share the compute, storage and networking hardware with their cloud providers other customers. Its similar to the way web hosting works: Public cloud is like shared web hosting and private cloud correlates to dedicated web hosting. (In cloud, both types are managed.)

Private cloud is the cloud terminology for scenarios in which the hardware and software resources underlying the cloud services are used exclusively by one business or organization. In private cloud, the hardware may be on-premises or off-site. It may be generated by the enterprise itself or provided physically or offered over the internet by a cloud service provider. The key point is that the hardware and software required to generate a private cloud are dedicated to or owned by one business and not shared by other businesses. This provides an added level of security that may be required for sensitive data.

Hybrid cloud environments are those in which an organization uses two or more cloud types public, private or community clouds in a coordinated way, usually on a common goal. (A community cloud is a cloud resource shared by two or more organizations working together on the same concern, such as related governmental departments and agencies, industry standards working groups and joint corporate/academic efforts.) One of the chief benefits of hybrid cloud is a good deal more flexibility and agility to get things done efficiently and quickly.

Multi-cloud means nothing more than using two or more cloud services from different cloud service providers. Why would you do this as opposed to sticking with one main provider? After all, it adds complexity, including a more challenging security environment. But there are good reasons why some enterprises intentionally use two or more IaaS vendors. Not placing all your eggs in one basket makes some sense, but there are better benefits to multi-cloud.

Cloud computing providers offer unique services, capabilities and pricing that you might want to leverage, possibly for different segments of your business.Using two or more cloud providers is one way to combat vendor lock-in, too. Finally, multi-cloud is about having the flexibility to move an application to a different cloud or run it across multiple clouds to get a job done faster. The advantage is similar to the benefits of hybrid cloud, but not every organization needs to incorporate a private cloud.

At the same time, there are benefits to sticking with a single cloud service provider. For some companies, going wide and deep with one vendor may give you opportunities you wouldnt get otherwise. Bottom line?Each companys cloud migration strategy will be unique and highly dependent on their business goals, current and future tech roadmap, and industry, among other factors.

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Cloud computing explained : PwC