Do You Really Need a Public Cloud?
There is and always will be, a raging debate over private versus public cloud solutions. Sure, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer extensive resources and scalability, but there are some compelling reasons why you might opt for building a private cloud dedicated to only your organization.
Let’s Look at Security
One of the most significant advantages of a private cloud is the enhanced security and privacy it offers. When you own the infrastructure, you have complete control over the security measures implemented. This is crucial for industries dealing with sensitive information, such as healthcare, finance, and government sectors. With a private cloud, data is stored within your own controlled environment, reducing the risk of data breaches and unauthorized access.
The thing with public clouds is – they’re multi-tenant environments. It’s multiple clients sharing the same infrastructure. And despite stringent security measures, the risk of data exposure due to potential vulnerabilities is higher. You’ve also got potential pitfalls like limited visibility, data loss, compliance issues, and cybercriminals. A private cloud mitigates these concerns by keeping data within your organization’s firewall. This helps you ensure compliance with regulatory standards such as GDPR or HIPA.
What About Customization and Control?
Building a private cloud is going to give you a plethora of customization options. You can tailor the infrastructure to meet specific business needs, optimize it for performance, storage, and networking capabilities. You can implement bespoke configurations and specialized applications tailored to your operational requirements to ensure optimal efficiency and performance. You can also choose the specific hardware and software that best aligns with your organization’s goals and technical demands. While there are a lot of acceptable ‘off the shelf’ options, people that opt to build a private cloud typically like controlling all facets of the deployment (right down to the bill of materials).
This level of granular control is a significant advantage over public cloud services, which are typically designed to serve a broad range of clients with standardized offerings. Public clouds offer a one-size-fits-all solution, which may not cater to the specific performance or security requirements of your organization. You can build an environment that will evolve in tandem with your business, providing flexibility and adaptability that standardized public cloud services can’t always match. This level of control extends to monitoring and managing workloads, allowing for a proactive approach in maintaining system health and optimizing performance.
Cost Efficiency in the Long Run
This is one of, if not the biggest consideration when deploying private clouds. Security and customization are great, but it always comes down to money (well, most of the time anyway – when was the last time you had a client say they wanted something, didn’t care what it cost and actually meant it?). While the initial investment in setting up a private cloud can be substantial, it often leads to significant cost savings over time. Public cloud services operate on a pay-as-you-go model, which quickly become expensive as your resource needs grow. It is cost-effective for short-term or fluctuating projects, but for continuous usage, especially high-demand applications and large-scale data processing, it can lead to unpredictable and escalating costs.
Speaking of escalating costs, when you’re on a public cloud platform, each additional gigabyte of storage, hour of computing power, and network bandwidth usage adds to the monthly bill. This can be a huge financial drain, particularly for businesses that require consistent and intensive cloud usage. Hidden costs, like data egress fees (charges for transferring data out of the cloud) and costs associated with scaling services up or down, can also contribute to the unpredictability and complexity of managing cloud expenses. We recently had a case where too many VMs were spun up without someone at the client site noticing until they were charged thousands of extra dollars.
A private cloud offers better cost predictability and control. Once the infrastructure is in place, ongoing expenses are primarily related to maintenance, upgrades, and operational support. These costs are more stable and can be planned for in advance, which will help budget projections. From a pure monetary standpoint, a private cloud allows an organization to fully utilize their investments in the hardware and software. With a well-managed private cloud, resources can be allocated and optimized to meet specific needs, which will go a long way in ensuring the infrastructure is deployed and used as efficiently as possible. If your business has stable, long-term computing needs, it can avoid the fluctuating costs and potential overcharges associated with public cloud services.
From a total cost of ownership (TCO) perspective, a private cloud can be lower in the long run. This includes not only the initial capital expenditure (CapEx) for hardware and setup but also the reduced operational expenditure (OpEx) over time. Don’t forget, the hardware purchased for the build gives you tax benefits too (depreciation).
Building a private cloud also eliminates the dependency on third-party vendors and potential issues related to vendor lock-in. In a public cloud scenario, migrating data and services between different providers can be costly and complex. By maintaining a private cloud, businesses retain control over their data and infrastructure, ensuring seamless operations without the risk of sudden cost increases or changes in service terms imposed by a public cloud provider.
If I Build a Private Cloud, Am I Compromising Performance and Reliability?
Nope! Private clouds can actually deliver superior performance and reliability when compared with public clouds, primarily because the resources are dedicated to your organization eliminating the “noisy neighbor” effect. In public clouds where tenants share and consume the same resources, heavy usage by other tenants can lead to resource contention and performance degradation for your tenant. With a private cloud, this becomes a non-issue due to your exclusive access to the infrastructure, ensuring performance remains constant and unaffected by external factors. This is particularly crucial for applications that require low latency, high throughput, and consistent performance like real-time data processing, high-frequency trading, and mission-critical applications can significantly benefit from the dedicated resources of a private cloud.
You have the autonomy to design and configure the infrastructure to meet your specific performance needs. You can optimize the hardware and software stack for your applications, ensuring maximum efficiency and performance. You can fine-tune your infrastructure storage, networking, and compute resources. For example, you can implement high-speed networking solutions, deploy faster storage options, and use specialized hardware to accelerate performance. By having control over these components, you can ensure that your infrastructure is perfectly aligned with your application requirements. This level of customization is typically not possible with public clouds and their standardized services because they’re designed to cater to a broad range of clients.
Private clouds provide the opportunity for better monitoring and resource management. You can implement advanced monitoring tools to track performance metrics, identify bottlenecks, and proactively address any issues that may arise. This proactive approach helps maintain high levels of system reliability, reducing downtime and improving overall operational efficiency.
In a private cloud environment, you can also implement redundancy and failover mechanisms tailored to your specific needs. This puts that 99.999 uptime in your hands. You can take steps to ensure that your applications remain available even in the event of hardware failures or other disruptions by designing a robust and resilient infrastructure.
Compliance and Legal Requirements Might Force You Into a Private Cloud
This is pretty straightforward. Certain industries are bound by strict regulatory and legal requirements that necessitate data to be stored and managed within specific jurisdictions. Public cloud providers may have data centers across various regions, but they cannot always guarantee compliance with local regulations regarding data sovereignty and residency.
If you are beholden to any of these requirements, a private cloud is the clear solution. By maintaining data within your own facilities, you ensure compliance with local laws and regulations, avoiding potential legal issues and fines. This level of control is particularly beneficial for multinational corporations needing to adhere to diverse regulatory environments.
Scalability and Flexibility
One of the hardest beat drums public cloud providers hammer is the ability to scale easily, enabling businesses to quickly adjust resources to meet changing demands. However, private clouds can also offer significant scalability and flexibility, making them a viable alternative. As you’d expect, modern private cloud solutions utilize virtualization and containerization technology for efficient resource management and on-demand scalability.
If you’re unfamiliar, virtualization enables multiple virtual machines (VMs) to run on a single physical server, effectively utilizing hardware resources and isolating applications for improved security and performance. This allows organizations to scale their infrastructure by simply adding more VMs as needed, without the necessity of purchasing and setting up additional physical servers. The more robust your hardware, the better the scaling.
Containerization, on the other hand, packages applications and their dependencies into containers that can run consistently across different environments. Containers are lightweight and portable, allowing for rapid deployment and scaling of applications. By leveraging container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes, businesses can automate the scaling of containers based on real-time workload demands.
With the right architecture, a private cloud can dynamically allocate resources based on workload demands, much like a public cloud. For example, if an application experiences a sudden spike in usage, the private cloud can automatically allocate additional resources to handle the increased load, ensuring seamless performance. Once the demand subsides, the resources can be reallocated to other tasks, optimizing overall efficiency. This really helps with your business growth without having to move to higher tiered public cloud services. You get much better granular control over resource allocation and custom scaling policies, keeping you out of the trap of over-provisioning.
Dynamically scaling resources enhances the agility of private clouds, which gives your business the ability to respond quickly to changing market conditions. You can also launch new products or services and handle seasonal fluctuations in demand without the limitations imposed by static infrastructure. This agility is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge when planning and managing infrastructure growth and business strategies. Proper scaling will mitigate cost and disruption issues.
What About Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery?
Look, we’ve previously blogged about how ensuring business continuity and having robust disaster recovery (DR) plans are paramount for any organization. Add private cloud into the mix, and it becomes table stakes. With a private cloud, you gain unparalleled control over your disaster recovery and business continuity strategies. You can design and implement highly customized DR solutions that align perfectly with your business requirements.
Private cloud infrastructure allows for seamless integration of advanced redundancy and failover mechanisms. This means that in the event of a hardware failure, cyber-attack, or natural disaster, your systems can swiftly recover and continue operating with minimal disruption. By maintaining critical data and applications within a controlled environment, a private cloud enhances your ability to execute DR plans effectively and efficiently. You can schedule regular backups and replicate data across multiple locations (if you’re built out that way) which will further mitigate data loss risk and make your data that much more available.
When you incorporate a private cloud into your business continuity and DR plans, you’re on your way to being fully equipped to handle any disruption, which will build trust and confidence with your customers. It provides the resilience needed to navigate uncertainties and safeguard your business’s future.
Conclusion
We don’t want anyone to think this is a hit piece on public cloud. It isn’t. Public cloud is as popular as it is for a reason and has its place for many businesses. It’s just that we’ve consulted with clients that are actually better served with a private cloud and wanted to cover some of the reasons you may want to consider one for your business, even if your industry doesn’t require it.
If you’d like to talk about cloud migration for your business and all it can entail, drop us a line!
– Share Post –
Leave a Reply