Public vs. Private Cloud: What You Need to Know

When it comes to streamlining operations and controlling costs, most companies are aware that cloud environments provide significant benefits over on-premises solutions. You can afford a more robust infrastructure, support mobility, and even increase security, all while lowering the expense associated with managing your IT needs.

However, when you decide to move forward with selecting a cloud solution, you don’t always know where to go. Companies often get lost evaluating many different solutions and vendors – public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds, multi-cloud, colocation-based and the other multitude of options. With such an abundance of choices, it is paramount to be able to build the right cloud platform; one that is specifically designed to support your business needs.

Often, public clouds are touted as the optimal enterprise solution for their lower costs, unlimited capacity, and flexibility. In reality, public cloud’s benefits are minimal, which leads to an ever-increasing number of organizations to seek out custom-built private clouds.

Let’s take a look at a brief description of both Public and Private Clouds solutions:

Public Cloud: Your data is stored in the provider’s data center and the provider is responsible for the management and maintenance of the data center. This type of cloud environment is appealing to companies because it reduces lead times in testing and deploying new products. However, the drawback is that many companies feel security could be lacking with a public cloud.

Private Cloud: A private cloud hosting solution, also known as an internal or enterprise cloud, resides on company’s hosted data center where all of your data is protected behind a firewall. This type of solution offers an increased level of security and shares very few, if any, resources with other organizations.

If you are wondering why managed private clouds are growing in prominence, here’s what you need to know.

Drawbacks of Public Clouds

When organizations move forward with public clouds, they quickly learn the following – IT environments built around public clouds are extremely hard to architect, challenging to manage and maintain. They also require a lot of attention and contribution from multiple parties, have absolute zero cost-transparency, and end up even more expensive than a traditional on-premise infrastructure.

The most cited challenge mature cloud users face is managing costs.

Managing the cost is difficult on public clouds since companies have far too many moving pieces or “friction points”. The cloud is only one piece of the puzzle, encompassing the storage and computing resources that you pay for to handle your IT operations.

In addition to cloud resources, companies have to coordinate additional pieces, including but not limited to:

  • Networking (internet, VPNs, MSPLs, firewalls, local configurations, and management)
  • Security (antimalware, antivirus, MFA, incident planning and response)
  • Compliance (systems, processes, user-education)
  • Physical device management and refresh cycles
  • File-sharing and collaboration tools (DropBox, ShareFile, Google Docs)
  • Disaster recovery (backups of file servers and individual devices)
  • Software licensing
  • Helpdesk
  • And the list goes on…

See what else goes into a robust cloud environment: TetherView What’s Included

How can someone be able to manage their IT expenses when their technology environment is so fragmented? This is why IT operational spending per user was up significantly in 2019 — $7,988 compared to $6,987 in 2017/18 (a 14.3% increase).

The number two cited cloud concern after maintaining cost is security and control. Again, when the infrastructure is so disjointed, companies do not have holistic visibility or control over their data.

For example, if an organization has 1000 employees, that translates into 1000+ computers, 1000+ mobile devices, 1000+ email accounts, 1000+ methods of sharing and storing data and millions of vulnerabilities and potential entryways for malicious activity.

Without the proper level of security and control, each and every device represents a potential risk. With a public cloud environment, you may not be able to use your preferred security mechanisms, leaving you vulnerable.

Why a Managed Private Cloud is Ideal

In many cases, the only thing a private cloud and public cloud have in common is the high level of mobility. In nearly every other way, private clouds significantly outperform.

1.) You gain full control over your environment, allowing you to completely customize the solution based on your specific needs. Plus, the cloud is highly scalable and your costs are much more predictable–  because you are not paying 25 different vendors and are not getting charged for every cloud-related activity (such as RAM, CPU and Bandwidth utilization). You’ll know precisely what your private cloud expenses will be, thanks to the flat-fee pricing model that TetherView offers.

2.)  Security and compliance.. With TetherView, your system is protected by cutting-edge security experts and features. In addition, you receive full access to comprehensive compliance reporting. In fact, TetherView’s private clouds can meet some of the strictest regulatory requirements around, including HIPAA, FINRA, SEC, AICPA, and others.

3.) You get the benefit of virtual desktops, ensuring complete mobility while enhancing security and control. By using the Virtual Workspace-as-a-Service solution, you can surpass disaster recovery and move into the world of full-fledged business continuity, ensuring your systems, applications, and data are always accessible, no matter what.

TetherView Private Cloud acts as a sanctuary, the digital equivalent of your own private castle. You get a controlled, secured, and centralized environment, all at a price you can afford.

Get in touch with our team to learn more. Contact Us