Choosing the right infrastructure type for your company helps drive future budgetary and staffing needs.

Protecting business IT assets and locating them in the right space are critical decisions when it comes to finding the best home for your IT infrastructure. Understanding different infrastructure options, their advantages, and what to consider before making a decision are important insights for any company considering such a migration.

As seen in the recent article 17 Reasons Smart CIOs Leverage Managed IT Systems, there are powerful options available for companies migrating to the cloud. Like decisions about the applications and data chosen to sit on-premise vs. cloud, so too must companies consider how that information will be structured.

Cloud computing has considerable advantages over on-premises computing, where companies store applications and data on on-site servers. Companies with on-premises data are responsible for capital purchases, maintenance, utility costs, and space obligations.

By contrast, cloud solutions offer flexible use of resources that can be scaled up or down on demand. Many cloud services offer pay-for-use models that can keep costs manageable. In addition, these companies absorb the maintenance, storage, and security obligations.

Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Options

For companies that choose to move to the cloud, there are multiple infrastructure options. Here’s a closer look at the three most common structures.

Public Cloud

With public cloud solutions, companies contract with a service provider to make available applications, services, data storage, and upgrades as needed. Operated over a public network, these cloud services are an affordable option for companies.

The key advantages of public cloud systems are:

• Easy scalability. Subscribers can pay for the cloud access they want and as company needs grow, scale up their capacity quickly. Public cloud systems are usually subscription-based and therefore highly scalable.
• Economies of scale. Because the services within the public cloud are shared among subscribers, individual subscribers can benefit from the advantages of shared bandwidth, capacity, and hardware.
• Reliability. Public cloud services are stored on banks of servers, providing clients with reliability and high uptime levels.
• Cost Shifting. When companies opt for public cloud computing, their capital expenses become operating expenses. This also reduces the financial and infrastructure barriers to entry for new projects.

Private Cloud

Private clouds allow for more internal control. Usually, a third-party provider hosts the infrastructure in a dedicated cloud space for the exclusive use of the contracting company. These platforms host the data and applications used by the company.

Private cloud systems provide a higher level of security for companies not wanting to share cloud space, or unable to do so for regulatory reasons. Among the key advantages of a private cloud solution are:

• Better Security. With private cloud services, companies have dedicated server space and security plans in place that are focused exclusively on your data.
• Control. With a private cloud, you have more control of the data and infrastructure. You can select the specific storage and networking characteristics that best suit your company’s needs.
• Compliance. For companies with major compliance requirements, private clouds offer a good option for keeping highly sensitive data within stringent access-control or retention guidelines.

Performance. With dedicated cloud services, there are no competing customers when it comes to managing capacity

Cloud services can be hosted fully by a third-party provider or in a hybrid model.

Hybrid Solutions

With a hybrid option, companies can leverage the best of both public and private clouds. Hybrid cloud solutions may use public cloud providers along with third-party private-cloud providers and even on-premise solutions to manage portions of your data, applications, and solutions.

The privately held and public components operate independently, communicating with each other via encrypted connections.

Hybrid solutions allow companies to store and access different types of data in different spaces. For example, a company may choose to run certain applications without a high compliance threshold via the public cloud. A private cloud solution might be best for the company’s disaster recovery and enterprise resource planning applications, and the customer data might be stored on-premises. Thus, hybrid solutions leverage several options that may be attractive for your organization.

Considerations

What option is best for your company? Consider the following:

• What are your company’s security needs? Companies with minimal security needs may choose the public cloud option, with its reliance on third-party security management.
• What is your IT budget? With private clouds, there is both infrastructure cost (servers, utilities) and personnel cost. Public clouds shift those considerations to operating costs, namely, the subscription prices.
• Is your company regulated? Understanding industry or government compliance needs often makes the cloud choice a clear one.
• Do you have a low-risk tolerance? If the answer is yes, a hybrid solution might make the most sense until key players are comfortable with the services and capabilities.

At Denovo, we help companies find the right cloud options for their organizations. To learn more about Denovo’s cloud solutions, contact us today.

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