Cloud provides unlimited storage and computing power to businesses. There are two different types of cloud that are commonly used, public and private. Deciding which is best for your organization can be difficult. Before we discuss the advantages of private cloud, you should understand the differences between the two.
In The Public Cloud
Applications and storage are made available via public cloud to the general public. Data from many sources share the same hardware.
In The Private Cloud
Private cloud delivers the same services as public cloud. The difference between the two is that private cloud infrastructure is dedicated to one organization. There is no sharing of hardware in a private cloud.
Private cloud providers offer less downtime. If there is a problem with private cloud, it affects one organization. The public cloud, if one server goes down, it could take many organizations with it. An outage for your cloud can damage company reputation and sales.
Public Cloud Outages Have Greatly Affected Business in 2017
Trello, Quora, and Splitwise were some of the businesses affected by the February 28th, AWS outage. This outage cost many organizations 8 hours of downtime. Amazon released a detailed report to their customers following the outage that explained that the cause was employee error. Amazon S3 was the datacenter affected by the outage and it is used by over 100,000 websites according to SimilarTech.
The Amazon S3 outage is the largest outage so far this year. Another recent issue with public cloud was the Azure storage issues on March, 15th, 2017, which lasted more than 8 hours. These failures affected 26 of the 28 Azure datacenter regions.
The Advantages of Private Cloud
Private cloud provided by small independent providers is less likely to have extended downtime because each server is dedicated to a single organization. Outages are easily fixed because they are localized to one server instead of an interconnected system. This system greatly lowers the risk for widespread or extended downtime.
The dedicated hardware in the private cloud also increases your security. For the healthcare industry this is necessary for protecting private patient information according to HIPAA regulations.
When public cloud is managed correctly, it is a cost effective and easily scalable option for businesses. It is when cloud providers grow so large that they cannot offer the direct service needed to ensure uptime that is a problem. If you don’t have need for data security and would enjoy cost effectiveness, public cloud is the best option for your company. When searching out the best cloud provider, check to see if they have a 100% service level agreement for downtime.
The Crossroads cloud computing services includes a 100% SLA for downtime and a fixed monthly cost for your solution that includes free first contact resolution support.