With so many options available it can be hard to decide whether a Private Cloud could be the right choice for your business. The wide range of options for hosting business-critical infrastructure has boomed over the past decade. Ten years ago, you needed the office space, expertise, and budget in order to build and maintain your own server infrastructure as well as the required internal space or data centre. Nowadays, however, businesses have a large variety of options available to choose from. These come with their own sets of features, benefits, and challenges.
Below we are discussing what Internal and Hosted Cloud Networks are and the benefits they can provide you with.
1. What Is A Private Cloud?
The private cloud, also called internal or corporate cloud, can be defined as computing services that are offered either over the internet or private internal networks. Internal cloud computing provides businesses with many of the benefits a public cloud has to offer, such as self-service, scalability, and elasticity, in addition to control, and customisation.
A public cloud can be defined as a computing service that is offered by third-party providers over the public internet. In contrast, a internal cloud consists of a cloud computing environment that is dedicated to a single organisation. While private clouds used to require the construction of an on-premises data centre, nowadays many business’ clouds run on space rented in a data centre of a large cloud vendor such as AWS or Microsoft Azure.
Two models for cloud services can be delivered within a private cloud. The first cloud service consists of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) which allows a company to use infrastructure, such as compute, network, and storage, as a service. The second cloud service consists of platform as a service (PaaS) which lets a company deliver everything from simple cloud-based applications to more sophisticated enterprise applications.
In many cases, private and public clouds can be combined to form hybrid clouds, which allow businesses to take advantage of cloud bursting to clear more space and scale computing services to support the public cloud when the computing demand increases.
2. What Are the Advantages of a Private Cloud?
When comparing the purchasing and maintaining of on-premises hardware, a private cloud and public cloud both have the advantage of scalability through a pay-as-you-need pricing model.
The additional advantages of a private cloud are:
Complete Control
Unlike public clouds, which are meant to serve the needs of a wide array of customers, a private cloud is built for your business alone. Due to that, the performance and architecture of your cloud can be made to fit around the way your company actually works and the business’s unique needs rather than adapting to a one-size-fits-all approach of a public cloud.
High-Performing and Scalable
As the owner and operator of your own internal or corporate cloud, you have the ability to access the full extent of its resources. Unlike the public cloud, you are never in contention for computing power with other uses. For private cloud hosted on provider’s network, adding more capacity is as simple as renting more server space.
Regulatory Compliance and Privacy
Regulations like the GDPR policies are placing very specific limits on the ways your company can gather and retain data, as well as how they can store and transfer this information. A private cloud avoids many of these regulatory headaches and privacy concerns that come with public clouds, enabling you to focus more your business goals.
3. Is A Private Cloud Right for My Business?
Having your own private cloud can come with a lot of advantages, ranging from improved security, increased control, to greater efficiency. A transition from physical servers to a cloud is a lot easier and faster than most businesses realise and cloud solutions are quickly becoming a necessity, especially for data-intensive businesses which are operating under strict privacy rules and regulations.
If you are interested in finding out more about the possibilities of cloud solutions or discuss what the best option for your business is reach out to us here. We currently offer a free IT consultation, so don’t forget to fill out our IT Workplace Assessment, so we can come back to you with our recommendations.