October 3rd, 2019
Establishing your online presence on the Cloud is more important than ever, and choosing the right Cloud environment is essential. You should know the difference between Private, public, and community cloud services. Here is a breakdown of variations to help you decide which Cloud environment is for you.
Private Cloud
A private cloud is an internal cloud hosted within a company’s intranet. Your data is behind a firewall. Typically this is maintained by companies that already have data centers. If you are a large size corporation and you want/require complete control over your Cloud environment, this may be the right choice for you. The following are a few pros and cons of owning and maintaining a private Cloud:
| Pros | Cons |
| Controlled level of security | Complexity |
| Controlled level of privacy | Increased IT staff |
| More control over configuration and management | Consistent maintenance costs |
| Overall increased costs vs. public cloud | |
| Increased start-up costs | |
| Security is only as good as your IT staff knowledge. | |
| You support yourself | |
| Remote access may be limited. | |
| Slow technology integration/upgrade |
Public Cloud
A public cloud is usually hosted off-site and typically maintained by a cloud hosting company that offers Cloud services. Most businesses and individual users utilize this type of environment due to the considerable decrease in costs in both maintenance and support staff. Your Cloud hosting company provides it all at a fraction of the cost of having a private cloud environment. The following pros and cons of utilizing a public Cloud:
| Pros | Cons |
| Multitude of services | Targeted more by hackers |
| Lower costs | |
| Pay as you go | |
| No maintenance costs to user/business | |
| Enterprise-level of security measures | |
| Implemented | |
| Scalability for resources | |
| Enterprise-level of 24/7 support from cloud | |
| Hosting company | |
| Faster technology integration/upgrade |
Community Cloud
A community cloud is a cloud environment shared among various entities that belong to the same community. You could think of it as a public Cloud environment that has set levels of security and privacy as a private Cloud. Some examples of a community cloud could be governments, health care companies, or even large manufacturing companies. These would be clouds that collaborate to create a large “community based” Cloud environment. Here are a few pros and cons of the Community Cloud:
| Pros | Cons |
| Flexibility and scalability | Complexity |
| Availability and reliability | Security is only as good as your IT staff knowledge |
| Security | You support yourself |
| Compliance | Remote access may be limited |
| Controlled level of privacy | Increased IT staff |
| More control over configuration and management | Consistent maintenance costs |
| Overall increased costs vs. public Cloud | |
| Increased start-up costs | |
| Unnecessary for small business, medium business, and most large businesses | |
| Slow technology integration/upgrade |
Conclusion
Most business and individuals will require utilization of a public Cloud like Sectorlink's cloud web hosting service, rather than a private or community-based cloud. Private Clouds are only necessary for large corporations that desire/require their data center and IT staff. The community cloud environment is for huge corporations or governments. Now that you fully understand each cloud environment, you should move to the Cloud today.