For nearly 10 years, cloud computing has been slowly gaining traction, moving out of the enterprise space and away from privately owned cloud offerings to become a tool for businesses of all sizes and types. Cloud computing can now be consumed in a variety of forms, depending on your organization’s needs. That’s why research firm Gartner estimates that, by 2025, 85% of businesses will embrace the cloud-first principle, which indicates the growing trend toward cloud adoption, primarily because cloud services reduce IT costs and enhance efficiency and flexibility.
Cloud adoption varies greatly depending on the size, type, and specialty of an organization. Cloud-based IT management vendor Auvik recently released research showing that most businesses remain split between cloud-based and on-premises infrastructure, although nearly 20% are working with entirely cloud-based infrastructure – primarily companies with 500-1000 or more employees. Small organizations remain committed to on-premises due to the complexity of migrating and then maintaining operations within a fully cloud environment with no in-house IT experts.
Before choosing the right cloud computing path for your organization, be certain you fully understand the three options – public, private, or hybrid – and the pros and cons of each. For some businesses, it is all a matter of selecting the least expensive alternative, others must contend with compliance standard requirements and other complications. Take your time to do an in-depth cloud comparison before making any decisions about what’s right for your business.
This popular cloud computing platform operates much like its name implies – serving multiple organizations (tenants) and leveraging the internet to deliver servers, storage, and other cloud resources and services. Public clouds are hosted by cloud service providers – often a well-known vendor such as Microsoft or AWS – and provide flexible, subscription-based access to cloud services. Public clouds are agile, have flexible pricing tiers, can scale quickly, and incur no maintenance costs. While the resources are shared, typically housed in several redundant, geographically dispersed, highly secure data centers, each organization has its own account, partitioned from other users. Public cloud is often a more affordable solution for smaller businesses.
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Private cloud platforms are the polar opposite of public solutions. Typically, private cloud provides highly customized environments tailored for a single tenant. While much more expensive, private cloud offers users high scalability and control alongside hyper-secure, compliant access.
Hosted either within an enterprise data center or through a cloud services provider that hosts the cloud in another location, a private cloud is defined by having all services, hardware, software, and other resources designated for a private network used by only one organization. Because of that exclusivity and high level of control, private clouds are a better fit for highly regulated industries that demand the highest level of security for data. That option brings with it a large price tag and the need for an experienced IT team to manage the environment and its access points. Private cloud is often best suited for those organizations that demand high-performance computing systems.
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Many organizations take advantage of the cloud without abandoning control by using a hybrid cloud platform. That option can be an environment that leverages both public cloud and on-premises resources, both public and private cloud platforms, private and on-premises, or a combination of all three options. Hybrid clouds can offset concerns many businesses continue to have about security, control, and availability while also offering network diversity to support reliability.
Because hybrid clouds combine public and private cloud computing environments, they offer the benefits of each option while leaving some of the negatives behind. For example, hybrid clouds offer agility and affordable storage of public cloud platforms as well as the privacy and security of private clouds. Hybrid cloud solutions have grown increasingly popular in the aftermath of COVID when many organizations had to scramble to blend their on-premise environments with a public cloud option to support the rapid shift to remote work.
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Adopting cloud technology – depending on your organization’s preference – can provide organizations with cost savings, scalability, accessibility, reliability, and enhanced security and compliance capabilities.
Worried about security and compliance? Exigent offers a private cloud solution custom-built to alleviate those concerns.
Prefer to leverage a public cloud solution to support other investments in Microsoft tools? Ask how we can migrate your business to Azure.
Before you decide cloud computing, schedule a consultation with Exigent to discuss cloud comparisons and what makes the most sense for your organization.
Daniel Haurey Jr. is the president and founder of managed IT services provider Exigent Technologies, which he founded in 1997. Under his leadership, the MSP has earned accolades ranging from Channel Futures MSP 501 to being named SonicWall’s 2024 MSP Growth Partner of the Year. Dan is a true entrepreneur, dedicated to growing, investing in, and mentoring small businesses. You can find him on LinkedIn, where he regularly posts about technology, business, leadership, and community.