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Deployment Models in Cloud Computing

Understanding the difference between private, public and hybrid cloud

Photo by C Dustin on Unsplash
Photo by C Dustin on Unsplash

Introduction

The term Cloud Computing refers to the on-demand access to a set of resources such as storage, applications, compute power and other IT services. Cloud users can have instant access to the provisioned services that are scaled based on the needs of the individual use-case.

There are however a few different deployment models of Cloud, namely private, public and hybrid. In today’s article we will discuss about each of the deployment models available for use as well as the most popular providers for each of them.


Private Cloud

Private cloud refers to a set of cloud services offered in a single-tenant environment (which means are shared across a single organisation) and are not exposed to the public. This deployment model is usually used for security reasons which in sometimes may also be associated with legal or even business requirements.

The private cloud can be hosted on on-premises infrastructure of the organisation itself or on a separate infrastructure which is typically provided by the third-party organisation offering the private cloud services.

Some of the most popular private cloud providers are RackSpace, VMware and RedHat.


Public Cloud

Now in the public cloud deployment model the infrastructure and resources are owned, maintained and operated by third-party providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Microsoft Azure, **** to name a few.

These third-party providers essentially make infrastructure and computer resources available to the public where users can access on-demand and in a pay-as-you-go fashion. This means that users are also able to scale these resources accordingly as they can increase or dispose resources almost instantly.

In general, public cloud save organisations the hassle of owning, maintaining and operating their own infrastructure. In other words, they trade capital expenses (hardware, infrastructure, rent, etc.) for operational expenses.


Hybrid Deployment Model

Finally, the last deployment model in cloud computing is the hybrid one that falls in the intersection of public and private clouds we discussed earlier.

This particular cloud computing model includes a mixture of on-premises, private cloud and public cloud services that also requires some sort of orchestration between them in order to operate properly.

This model is quite useful when an organisation wants to take advantage of the benefits of both public and private cloud computing services.


Final Thoughts

In today’s article we explored the three basic deployment models in the context of cloud computing, namely public, private and hybrid models.

Even though cloud computing is quite mature as a concept, I’d argue that we are still in a transition period. Many companies prefer the hybrid deployment model for time being due to regulations and legislations that need to be met.

It will be very interesting to see how these companies will deal with obstacles of this nature and if will ever move to a cloud-only model.


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