Public, Private, Hybrid, Multi and/or Community Cloud? The cloud types explained:
Cloud types: Cloud-based software solutions are playing an increasingly important role in the IT landscape. Microsoft Dynamics, for example, now supports more functionalities in the cloud solution than in the on-premise solution.
But how do the different types of cloud differ
- Public Clouds
- Private Clouds
- Hybrid Clouds
- Multi Cloud
- Community Clouds
of each other?
Public Cloud = open and accessible to everyone
We know the public clouds from a wide variety of providers – Dropbox, Google Docs and GMX Mail or even the paid services such as Microsoft Office 365 or SAP Business by Design are among them. Here, many customers share a common infrastructure. This infrastructure is often not located in Europe and is then not subject to the GDPR. Since this has deterred many customers in the B2B sector in the past, more and more providers are now starting to locate the public cloud in Germany or at least in Europe.
Private Cloud = especially for your own company
However, companies can also offer their employees the cloud-typical advantages and at the same time not do without data protection and security. This variant is often used by companies. This means that the infrastructure for the cloud is either operated in your own company (on-premise) or made available individually in a data center of an external service provider. As mentioned at the beginning, there are now providers who equip applications for this IT infrastructure with fewer functions and thus accelerate the solution for the public cloud.
Hybrid clouds = the best of both worlds?
Hybrid forms of both approaches are called hybrid clouds. For example, non-privacy applications can be mapped on the public cloud, the security-relevant processes and data on the private cloud. However, this is only possible if this separation can also be implemented critically and uncritically. However, the fact that almost all of a company’s data is either security or privacy relevant in some way has given birth to a new cloud form. The mix of private cloud and flexible private cloud. Here, all data remains in the protected space and, depending on the requirements of the computing capacities, is either outsourced from internal to external data centers with “own” servers or vice versa.
Multi Cloud = the high art of the cloud
The multi-cloud approach goes one step further. Cloud services and platforms from several providers are used in parallel. This creates the connection of several cloud models (namely public and private) in a centralized, large cloud. Companies become more flexible, availability is increased and a possible failure is reduced. However, this also increases the complexity and the requirement for uniform, comprehensive data protection concepts.
Community Clouds = interesting for projects
Less often there are the so-called community clouds. A firmly defined group of users accesses certain applications, for example as part of a project. This cloud infrastructure is shared by multiple companies or institutions and is not publicly available.
Where is the journey going now? Are there any clear favorites?
As always, it depends: Companies in the healthcare or banking sector will not use the public cloud for their very sensitive data. Start-ups, on the other hand, that go on a journey with non-critical data do not need a private cloud. The statement can therefore certainly not be answered in general. The requirements for data protection, data security, availability, performance, functionality, IT costs, etc. are too diverse.
Nevertheless, our cloud forecast: more public, less private, more hybrid and multi.
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Note: This is a machine translation. It is neither 100% complete nor 100% correct. We can therefore not guarantee the result.