Private vs. Public Cloud: What Is Good For Your Business?

Over the last 18 months the debate as to which type of cloud - private or public - is better has been hotting up. As far as Tom Brand, virtualisation practice lead at Glasshouse Technologies (UK) is concerned there is no debate: neither is better. He explains below:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying cloud computing isn’t a viable option, just that organisations need to look at a number of factors before making any strategic cloud decisions:

How large is the organisation?

What are my cloud computing requirements?

What constraints do we have?

How much will it cost to transition to the cloud?

The size of an organisation has a significant impact on the type of cloud model they are likely to use. SMBs tend to have limited capital expenditure and basic IT requirements, in particular security, making them perfect candidates for end-to-end solutions from a public cloud infrastructure.

With the rapid growth of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Storage-as-a-Service, many organisations no longer have to manage any kind of IT infrastructure at all. 

Businesses can simply take advantage of day-to-day applications being delivered via the Internet on a pay-as-you-go model (Google Apps is perhaps the most dominant offering on the market).

In particular start-ups with little capital expenditure and few resources are very unlikely to invest in new equipment, turning to the public cloud instead to provide a cost effective alternative.