Private cloud or public? Which should you choose?

Whether pub­lic or pri­vate cloud, senior lead­ers must keep in mind the ulti­mate goal: to opti­mise or inno­vate busi­ness IT appli­ca­tions through the strate­gic use of cloud infra­struc­ture and ser­vices. Poor­ly thought out strate­gies can quick­ly leave a busi­ness blimp-like, lag­ging behind Con­corde com­peti­tors. In an age of cloud ascen­dance, igno­rance is no longer an option.

In my expe­ri­ence, senior lead­er­ship has been so drenched in a tor­rent of cloud mar­ket­ing spiel that they often have an inflat­ed sense of the pow­ers cloud pos­sess­es and an under­ap­pre­ci­a­tion of pit­falls to avoid. Add to the mix a lega­cy mind­set and a firm might soon find itself star­ing into the void.

Businesses must consider both public and private cloud systems

Many busi­ness­es believe it’s sim­ply a mat­ter of lift and shift: plonk­ing lega­cy appli­ca­tions in vir­tu­al machines, mov­ing them from on-premise facil­i­ties into the pub­lic or pri­vate cloud, opti­mis­ing them, then dri­ving effi­cien­cies by only pay­ing for resources on demand. While undoubt­ed­ly true for some appli­ca­tions, sig­nif­i­cant effi­cien­cies can be often gained sim­ply by right-siz­ing work­loads on exist­ing on-premise infra­struc­ture.

By not con­sid­er­ing the long-term impli­ca­tions of the pub­lic cloud ser­vice deliv­ery mod­el, firms that ini­tial­ly expe­ri­ence sav­ings may quick­ly see their costs spi­ral out of con­trol. For many appli­ca­tions, pri­vate cloud, with its flex­i­ble licens­ing arrange­ments, is more cost effi­cient, espe­cial­ly when cou­pled with its automa­tion and capac­i­ty plan­ning capa­bil­i­ties.

And as it affords full own­er­ship and con­trol, busi­ness­es that rely on appli­ca­tions car­ry­ing out high­ly reg­u­lat­ed activ­i­ties should keep them in a pri­vate cloud to speed up com­pli­ance process­es.

To unlock the true ben­e­fits of cloud ser­vices – there are more than 150 avail­able on Ama­zon Web Ser­vices (AWS) – busi­ness­es must enact a devel­op­er-like approach to their appli­ca­tions and avoid the temp­ta­tion of the vir­tu­al machine life raft, which can be daunt­ing.

Security in either the public or private cloud depends on end-users

Start­ing from scratch and reimag­in­ing the way appli­ca­tions are run not only vast­ly improves effi­cien­cies com­pared with lift­ing and shift­ing, but also allows for exper­i­ment­ing and inno­va­tion. The lat­est arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence ser­vices, such as Google Ten­sor­flow or AWS Lex, turn the pub­lic cloud into a lab­o­ra­to­ry for build­ing inter­est­ing appli­ca­tions that tran­scend com­pe­ti­tion. Don’t be fooled: if you’re not exploit­ing cloud ser­vices in this man­ner, you can bet your com­peti­tors are.

A com­mon mis­nomer is that pub­lic cloud is inher­ent­ly more inse­cure than its pri­vate vari­ant, result­ing in many organ­i­sa­tions keep­ing their sen­si­tive data on-premise or in a pri­vate cloud by default. In real­i­ty, secu­ri­ty out­comes depend on the dili­gence of end-users. Too many incor­rect­ly assume it’s the respon­si­bil­i­ty of ser­vice providers to secure appli­ca­tions and they end up vul­ner­a­ble to threats.

But equal­ly, many are unaware that a gran­u­lar approach to appli­ca­tion recon­struc­tion can lever­age microser­vices to cre­ate sophis­ti­cat­ed archi­tec­tures more secure than a trusty in-out fire­wall. Being unaware of these pos­si­bil­i­ties and keep­ing work­loads on-premise as a result could actu­al­ly leave a firm more exposed.

To suc­ceed in a cloud world, these deci­sions must be made con­tin­u­al­ly on an app-by-app basis, which essen­tial­ly comes down to how much an organ­i­sa­tion is pre­pared to change its approach to IT. An app-cen­tric approach to enter­prise IT moves away from the tra­di­tion­al peri­od­i­cal release and review of IT apps and infra­struc­ture to one of con­tin­u­ous deliv­ery and opti­mi­sa­tion. Gone is the two-year life cycle and a busi­ness-first, IT-sec­ond mind­set. IT and busi­ness are two sides of the same coin.