What Is Public Cloud?

A public cloud is a platform that makes the standard cloud computing resources (e.g. storage, compute power, virtual machines..) available to users via the internet. Today, there are three main public cloud providers: AWS, Microsoft and Google. These providers deliver their services over the internet or through dedicated connections, and they use a fundamental pay-per-use approach.

The Public Cloud Explained

The public cloud provides users access to their computing resources using an as-a-service model. These resources and services are divided into three main categories: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS).

What are the Benefits of a Public Cloud? 

  • Lower operation costs - no investments in own IT infrastructure necessary
  • Massive scalability to grow and expand as your business grows
  • Quick, simple and on-demand upgrades - Minimum effort to operate and manage certain services - the provider installs, operates, maintains and monitors the hardware and software to deliver most services
  • Secure underlying infrastructure to protect your data from threats
  • More reliable and redundant than on-prem data centers from outages so your data is always available

 

Supporting private cloud with hyperconvergence

What are the Differences Between a Private Cloud and a Public Cloud?

The public cloud is hosted by one of the three big cloud providers (AWS, Microsoft, Google) and delivers IT resources and services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) over the internet to the public cloud. Customers pay in increments of usage for the resources they consume.

A private cloud offers many of the same capabilities as a public cloud, but it is owned and maintained by a single organization. The company could host the private cloud in its own data center or outsource the hosting and operations to a third-party provider.

Finally, a hybrid cloud combines the elements of the public and private cloud, and it’s intended to allow the customer to decide where they want to host their workloads as it makes most sense for their organization.

What is the difference between Public and Private Cloud?

Is the Public Cloud Secure?

Companies often disqualify the public cloud because of security concerns on where their data or workloads live. However, this assessment of public cloud security can easily be debunked by taking into account the level of security measures and investment in the most up-to-date security solutions that public cloud providers make. Having a myriad of customers dependent on them, public cloud providers are not willing to take any risks so the level of talent hired and tools used to protect their customer’s data is something that no private cloud could surpass.

 Public Cloud Use Cases

Some typical use cases for the public cloud include:

Disaster recovery and business continuity

Providing redundant on-prem systems cost a lot of money and causes effort. In a public cloud, a second infrastructure can be provided, which can be activated in an emergency until the disaster recovery is complete and the original systems can be taken over again.

Dynamic resource requirement needs

Using a public cloud allows you to scale resources and performance as it may be needed based on seasonality or demands from the business. When services are elastic and can be easily expanded, you only pay for the capacities actually used and, compared with an oversized in-house IT infrastructure, significantly reduce your costs.

Data security

The rise of cyberattacks in recent years has increased the need for organizations to consider hosting their workloads in the utmost secure location. When you store your data on the cloud, you can delete or move any sensitive data into another account remotely. Breaching the security protocol on the cloud system is very difficult.

Public Cloud Best Practices and How Nutanix Can Help

The Nutanix Cloud Platform ensures on-premises and public environments are operated as a single cloud. Enabling hybrid multicloud with Nutanix gives you the flexibility to pick the right resources for your workloads and strategy, and adjust seamlessly as your business grows. Burst capacity from datacenters to hosted clouds and public clouds like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure. Simplicity comes from integrating natively with public clouds without requiring any additional network overlay complexity and providing direct access to cloud-native services.

Unlike the other hybrid cloud offerings in the market, the Nutanix hybrid multicloud solution features out-of-the-box networking integration with public clouds. This allows application builders to focus on code and application design, not the infrastructure or cloud connectivity. Nutanix Cloud Platform offers the best of all worlds—controlled behind a single pane of glass—unifying management and operations with one-click simplicity, intelligent automation, and always-on availability.

Related Resources

Alt

Public Cloud Benefits You Want. Private Cloud Control You Need.

Alt

Workload & TCO Considerations when Choosing Between Public, Private & Hybrid Cloud

Alt

Cloud Usage Report 2021

Get Started with Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

Let's Get Started!

Build your clouds your way in a few clicks. Instantly complete all your IT tasks on a unified cloud platform with Nutanix.