Private vs Public Cloud Computing – Basic Definition

Written By: langdon on September 19, 2009 No Comment

Private & Public Cloud Computing – Basic Definition

Public Clouds are infrastructure services offered by companies like Amazon, Rackspace, GoGrid, etc. and platform services like Microsoft Azure, Google App Engine, etc.. These cloud providers take care of deploying, managing, securing the infrastructure and companies can consume it on demand with a pay as you consumption option, much like the utility consumption. Private Clouds are deployments made inside the company’s firewall (on-premise datacenters).

Larger companies and government departments are likely to consider going to the Cloud but in a more controlled and secure fashion via a Private Cloud. A Private Cloud has all the benefits of the Public Clouds but it is hosted inside the firewall of the company or department it is supporting. Full control of who has access to data is maintained while all the benefits of the Cloud are realized. End-users simply buy their Cloud services from the Private Cloud and the Private Cloud treats the end-users in the same way a Cloud vendor treats its customers. An institution would need to be fairly large to get benefits from this model, however, and smaller groups that do not want to or cannot have their data leave their network can host virtualized environments that have many of the features of the Cloud without the benefits of sharing the expertise and access to scalable resources that a Cloud provider has.

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