Cloud deployment models

In the world of Information Technology (IT) there are three different cloud deployment models.

These different cloud deployment models determine where your data is held and how your customers and/or users, interact with that data. It also defines how they get to the data and where your applications will run. The decision on which model to adopt depends very much on several key factors:

• • How much of your own infrastructure do you want to manage?
  • How much of your IT infrastructure do you need to manage?
  • What skills you have in house to manage it?
  • What budget you are willing to invest to buy and operate it?

There are of course many other factors to consider but let’s explore the three methods.

Explore the three deployment methods of cloud computing

Public versus Private versus Hybrid

Private cloud

With a private cloud, you build and create a cloud infrastructure environment in a data centre, which you may own but likely rent space in. You essentially provide self-service access to your business’ compute and data resources, to users in your organisation. This method (whilst some do not consider it cloud at all) delivers a simulation of a public cloud to your users. The difference is that you remain completely responsible for the investment, purchase, maintenance and support of the hardware and software services you provide.

Advantages

This approach has several advantages:

• • You can be confident that the deployment method and configuration can support any scenario and legacy application
  • You have the control (and responsibility) over security
  • Private clouds can be easier to ensure compliance and regulatory requirements

Disadvantages

Some reasons teams move away from the private cloud are:

• • You will have some initial CapEx costs, as you must purchase the hardware and maintain it
  • By owning the equipment you limit the flexibility and agility, to scale you will need to buy, install, and setup new hardware
  • Skills are in high demand, and your own private cloud will require IT skills which are hard to come by and retain
  • With varying products and solutions in the marketplace, multi-skilling or partnering may be needed, as employing an individual to specialise on each platform may not be financially viable

A use case for a private cloud could be if you have legacy applications that will not be supported in the public cloud, or for legislative reasons you may need to keep certain data ‘in country’ or privately.

A private cloud can provide cloud functionality to external customers as well, or to specific internal departments such as Accounting or Human Resources.

Public cloud

Increasingly popular is the public cloud. Provided by the big players; Amazon, Microsoft and Google Cloud, you have no local hardware to manage or keep up-to-date as everything runs on your cloud provider’s hardware. You can also In some cases, save money by having shared rather than dedicated resources.

Many larger businesses now have a ‘cloud first’ strategy, and to provide breadth and more control often adopt ‘multi-cloud’ environments, utilising services from more than one public cloud provider.

Advantages

• • High scalability/agility – you don’t have to buy a new server in order to scale
  • Pay-as-you-go pricing – you pay only for what you use, no CapEx costs
  • You’re not responsible for maintenance or updates of the hardware
  • Minimal technical knowledge to set up and use – you can leverage the skills and expertise of the cloud provider to ensure workloads are secure, safe, and highly available

A common scenario for public cloud, would be deploying a web application, website or a blog site on hardware and resources that are owned by a cloud provider. Using a public cloud in this way would  allow cloud users to get their website or blog up quickly, and then focus on maintaining the site without having to worry about purchasing, managing or maintaining the hardware for it to run on.

Disadvantages

Not all business use cases will fit public cloud. Here are some disadvantages to think about:

• • As mentioned previously, there may be specific security requirements, legislation or restrictions for governance that cannot be met by using public cloud
  • You would not own the hardware or services, and you cannot manage or have control over the underlying infrastructure itself.
  • Certain business needs such as managing legacy applications may be hard to deliver and support

Hybrid cloud

A hybrid cloud combines the two, a blend of public and private clouds. This approach enables you to run your applications in the most appropriate location for the business need. As an example, you could host your internet facing website in the public cloud, and then link it back to a highly secure database, hosted in your private cloud or on-premise data centre.

This design principle is particularly helpful when you have some data that you want full security control of and don’t want to run in the cloud. As an example you could have legislative data such as personal health data that cannot be exposed externally, this would need to be in your private cloud or date centre. Or you could have requirements to run old archive systems running locally and need to connect those to the public cloud for access.

Advantages

Some specific advantages of a hybrid cloud are:

• • You can keep still run legacy applications and systems which may require outdated operating systems (unsupported in the public cloud
  • You have flexibility with what you run in the public cloud and what you run locally
  • Economies of scale that the public cloud offers provides scale and agility when you need it
  • Your own equipment can be used to meet security, compliance, or legacy cases where you need to completely control the environment

Disadvantages

Some things that you will definitely need to manage and be aware of are:

• • Operating in a hybrid cloud, can be more expensive than selecting one specific deployment model, as it will involve some CapEx cost up front as well as the ongoing OpEx.
  • Public cloud needs careful planning and ongoing management. Do not allow everyone with admin access to spin up machines or add storage, it will get out of control very quickly
  • It can be more complicated to set up and manage a hybrid cloud environment, but there are plenty of fantastic companies out there to help you on you journey

Summary

Whichever method you choose, cloud computing is flexible and gives you the ability to choose how you want to deploy it. The cloud deployment model you choose depends on your budget, and on your specific business needs.