Public Cloud? Private Cloud? Hybrid Cloud?

What is it? ... in my entire consulting career, believe it or not, this is one of the most asked questions during cloud computing conversation.

The last persons who ask me this question are IT officers at banks, I was there for a 30 mins requirement gathering session, but then turn into a quite entertaining 1.5 hrs mini-lecture session.

That is some kind of inspiration you know, being asked this kind of question many times including central bank officers and that I need to include this lesson in the training as well.

Without further ado, let's dive in

It is actually very simple: public or private is just about the ownership of the cloud service

• Public Cloud = not own by you
• Private Cloud = own by you
• Hybrid Cloud = mix between public and private

Example: Storage as a Service (SaaS): Grive

• If you use Google Gdrive: that is public cloud, Gdrive is owned by Google not you.
• If you setup your own Storage-aaS: that is private cloud, because that service is owned by you.

Let's see another example of public & private cloud in action this time

• Public cloud: IaaS demo at Upclod
• Private cloud: IaaS demo on Proxmox

What about hybrid cloud? well it is the mix of public and private cloud. Meaning you setup and use your own private cloud and use some of public cloud service as well.

Example: hybrid Exchange mail service

• You setup one Exchange server on you private cloud infrastructure (also called on premise)
• You also use Exchange online service on Office365.com
• You integrate your on premise Exchange server with Exchange Online
• Now, some mailboxes are on your on premise Exchange server (private cloud) and some mailboxes are on Exchange Online (public cloud)
• This type of setup is called hybrid cloud (mix private cloud and public cloud)

Hopefully, you now have an idea and good imagination of public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud.

Cheers,

Souriya