By IT Brew Staff
less than 3 min read
Definition:
The three core cloud deployment models are public, private, and hybrid clouds. There’s also the community cloud model, in which cloud infrastructure is shared collaboratively by several entities, such as government agencies or private companies.
Public clouds are run by third-party providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, or Google; they offer cloud compute and infrastructure via the internet to whomever has the money, and usually charge by usage. For clients, public clouds offer the ability to quickly spin up resources without the associated setup and maintenance costs, but many public cloud features come with low customability and other issues.
Private clouds are run by a single organization for that organization’s exclusive use. These clouds are sometimes referred to as internal clouds and offer a degree of security and support unavailable to public cloud users. However, setting up and running a private cloud can quickly become expensive once you factor in the hardware and management costs.
Hybrid clouds, in theory, give organizations the best of both worlds: Users within an organization can rely on public clouds for some functions and private clouds for others. For example, a software developer within a large tech company running a hybrid cloud might choose to use cloud-based tools via AWS or Microsoft Azure to build an app, then turn to a private cloud to access a database of highly sensitive customer information for a cybersecurity test. However, these mixed environments are often more complex to manage.
