Thinking about switching to cloud computing? There are four key cloud deployment models for you to consider: public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and multicloud.
Finding the right cloud solution for your business means understanding what your organization truly needs. After all, in the cloud, your data finds its dream home.
Cloud computing opens doors to enhanced flexibility, capacity, and scalability, and is a powerful tool to achieve business outcomes.
Just remember, the key to unlocking the benefits of cloud computing lies in choosing the right cloud deployment model.
So, how do you choose the right model for your organization? Let’s first take a look at the options.
Cloud computing deployment models
- Public cloud: hosted by third-party vendors over the internet and widely available to multiple organizations and the public.
- Private cloud: hosted on-premises or by third-party providers and dedicated to one organization, offering customized options and security features.
- Hybrid cloud: a combination of private and public clouds, allowing organizations to leverage the benefits of each and provide seamless integration between on-premises infrastructure and public cloud services.
- Multicloud: Using multiple public cloud services, often from different cloud providers, to benefit from cost advantages and flexibility in cloud services options.
Public cloud: The busy coworking space
You’re probably most familiar with this type of cloud computing deployment model because it’s the most popular and widely available through multiple cloud service providers, including the hyperscalers.
There are options in public cloud that include:
- Software-as-a-service (SaaS)
- Platform-as-a-service (PaaS)
- Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)
Picture a busy coworking space, where desks, meeting rooms, and facilities are shared among businesses, fostering collaboration. With the public cloud, businesses tap into a vast pool of resources hosted by cloud service providers over the Internet, enabling scalability and cost-effectiveness. This promotes faster innovation, agility, and global expansion.
Public cloud allows you to access resources on-demand and pay only for what you use, but it’s important to make sure you understand the cloud services you’ve purchased and ask the right questions about the vendor’s pricing policies. It’s important to understand that in a public cloud, your data may be hosted alongside other users’ data, requiring stringent segmentation strategies to ensure security and compliance.
Compared to other cloud deployment models, public cloud is more mainstream, offering a lower base cost—but remember it is less secure than private and hybrid cloud options, and less flexible than multicloud.
Private Cloud: Dedicated office building
A private cloud deployment model is dedicated to one organization, and that’s YOU!
Imagine having your own dedicated office building, fully customized to meet your company’s specific needs and accessible only to authorized personnel, ensuring maximum security and control. Hosted either on-premises or by third-party cloud service providers, the private cloud offers a tailored environment for sensitive data and critical workloads, allowing organizations to maintain compliance and governance standards with confidence.
This exclusive space provides the foundation for innovation and growth, with the flexibility to adapt to evolving business requirements while safeguarding sensitive information. It also offers reliability, ensuring consistent performance.
Compared to other cloud deployment models, a private cloud offers greater control over your data and resources. If you collect and manage vast amounts of sensitive data, a private cloud is a great choice to ensure data sovereignty and security.
When it comes to cloud computing, the higher cost of managing a private cloud compared to the lower cost of using the services of a public cloud makes a private cloud more efficient for large enterprises.
Statistics show that only 8 percent of companies use a private cloud exclusively, while 84 percent of companies use at least one private cloud, and 94 percent use a public cloud as part of a multicloud or hybrid cloud deployment model.
Hybrid Cloud: The best of both worlds
A hybrid cloud deployment model combines public and private infrastructure to leverage the security and compliance features of a private cloud as well as the cloud services options and reduced cost of a public cloud.
Think of having a headquarters that combines your private office space with access to shared coworking areas, providing flexibility and scalability while maintaining privacy and security. By seamlessly integrating private and public cloud environments, the hybrid cloud allows organizations to leverage the best of both worlds, optimizing performance and cost-efficiency.
This hybrid model enables businesses to dynamically allocate resources, scale applications, and innovate faster. empowering them to stay ahead in today’s competitive landscape.
Additionally, it facilitates seamless data migration and workload portability, enabling organizations to adapt to changing business needs with ease.
For small to mid-sized organizations, a hybrid option can be attractive because it lowers costs while offering enhanced security features.
According to Flexera, 80 percent of companies choose a hybrid cloud deployment model, while 89 percent are using a multicloud environment.
A hybrid cloud can cost more than a public cloud option but offers more control and security—and it’s less restrictive and costly than a private cloud. If your business needs flexibility, extended capacity, advanced data analytics, and reliable cybersecurity, a hybrid cloud computing environment might just be the option you need.
Multicloud: Diverse resources, maximum flexibility
According to VMware (Broadcom), all cloud providers are not created equal: “Organizations adopt a multicloud strategy to deliver best-of-breed IT services, to prevent lock-in to a single cloud provider, or to take advantages of cloud arbitrage and choose providers for specific services based on which provider is offering the lowest price at that time.”
Envision leasing office spaces in various buildings across different neighborhoods, each offering unique amenities and services, allowing you to optimize costs and leverage the best resources for your business needs. Similarly, multicloud strategy involves using multiple public cloud services from different providers to capitalize on cost advantages, performance optimizations, and service diversity. This approach ensures resilience, flexibility, and freedom of choice, as organizations can select the most suitable cloud platforms for each workload or application, minimizing vendor lock-in and maximizing agility.
If you want the cost savings and resources of a public cloud but need to optimize savings and leverage more flexibility in choosing resources and applications, consider a multicloud model.
Compared to a private cloud, a multicloud model requires more stringent management to ensure data security and compliance. You’ll need to monitor costs closely to make sure that cloud services and data are being used efficiently across the chosen cloud environments.
With careful planning and management you can ensure seamless communication and data transfer between different cloud environments and services. Training is important to create reliable expertise in each cloud environment and ensure the compatibility that you’ll need to maintain performance in a multicloud deployment model.
Your business, your choice in a cloud-smart world
The most important consideration when choosing the right cloud computing deployment model is the individual business needs of your organization.
A cloud-smart plan, based on where your business is and where you want it to be, is an important tool to expand your cloud computing options and serve the business goals of your evolving organization.
Choosing the right cloud deployment model—one that best helps your organization streamline processes, enhance collaboration, and accelerate time-to-market—can have a significant impact on your business. Make the cloud-smart choice!
An experienced and trusted cloud services provider can help you narrow down your options and choose the public, private, hybrid, or multicloud deployment model that will deliver the best outcomes for your business.
