Choosing the right cloud configuration for your business is critical for lowering IT costs, managing company growth, and protecting against calamities. Companies that are overly dependent on their own private cloud face rising IT costs and vulnerability to IT business calamities. On the other hand, companies that are overly dependent on public clouds, place their IT future in the hands of strangers. Companies that make judicious use of a hybrid cloud architecture, minimize the risks and maximize the gains that can be obtained from both private and public clouds.
Private business clouds, swaths of interconnected servers and software and computers, were what many companies of the new millennia were built on. IT staffs in the early 2000s, built up on-site networks which connected the companies' computers together. They installed software on the servers for the employees to share, backed up data on the network to hard drives and tape drives, and developed software that glued the company' IT operations together and kept it running. As the company's IT needs grew, so did the complexity and problems of running the in-house network. Computer crashes, data thefts, and breakdowns on infrastructure software as well as the time to maintain that software all became bigger issues as well as IT costs. What once were small networks, grew into large networks that constantly needed hardware and software upgrades, which constantly needed larger IT budgets, new computers and new software, and higher levels of professional staff to maintain.
Public clouds today present a solution to the problems, costs and complexities of on-site private clouds. With a public cloud, a company no longer needs to have an on-site network and associated IT staff to support the companies IT network. With a public cloud, all hardware (hardware as a service, HAAS) and software (software as a service, SAAS) that a company needs, in theory, can be accessed over the Internet. All the company needs are terminals to access the software and hardware at the off-site public cloud.
For example, with a subscription to Microsoft's public cloud, all of a companies employees, can have complete access to Microsoft;s vast data center and Microsoft's vast number of software products. With additional configurations a company can utilize Microsoft's Azure cloud as a supercomputer that will run massively complex and data intensive calculations that they could never do, in a practical manner, with an on-site private cloud. Furthermore, all of a company's files and data can be stored in Microsoft's cloud with relatively little risk that the data will be lost or broken into. Finally, all this can be done without a costly IT staff and without the need to consider the costs of on-site hardware and software upgrades.
The theory is great when it comes to the public cloud. Lower IT costs, access to the latest software instantly, worldwide company connectivity, and no more worries about company-wide hardware and software upgrades. In practice though, companies don't always want all their data and all their software on the cloud. There are also security issues, and laws and regulations when considering a public cloud. Furthermore, companies may have already made a substantial investment in their own private cloud. As well, its often not practical for employees to access software programs on the cloud over the Internet. It is often just much more convenient and efficient to keep the software on their own personal computer then access it over the cloud.
For those in this situation, a hybrid cloud is the solution. A hybrid cloud consists of an interconnected public cloud and private cloud. In a hybrid cloud architecture, a company uses its internal data center and IT staff to manage part of the companies IT needs and a public cloud, or for that matter several public clouds, for a different set of IT needs. Often though, a company can opt for a cloud architecture that interconnects a private cloud with a public cloud. In these cases, data files may be backed up in real time to a public cloud, offsetting the need for the IT staff to back-up their private cloud. Persistent data backup schemes make this task very efficient. A persistent data back-up scheme scheme doesn't back up all the data, but only the data that has changed. For example, in a persistent data scheme, only data files that had changed since the last backup are saved.
As time matches on, the idea of private clouds and even hybrid clouds may drift into just the concept of a public cloud. Startups for example, may just not have the motivation for establishing an in-house network complete with servers, routers and gateways and an expensive IT staff. If a public cloud provides the horsepower of a million computers, the ability to interconnect tens of thousands of employees, and data backup in a more and more reliable and trusted manner all without the need of costly IT staff, the risks and costs of a private cloud and even a hybrid cloud outweigh the risks and costs of a public cloud.
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