A public cloud is a type of cloud computing in which a cloud service provider makes computing resources available to users over the public internet. These include SaaS applications, individual virtual machines (VMs), bare metal computing hardware, complete enterprise-grade infrastructures and development platforms. These resources might be accessible for free or according to subscription-based or pay-per-usage pricing models.
The public cloud provider owns, manages and assumes all responsibility for the data centers, hardware and infrastructure on which its customers’ workloads run. It typically provides high-bandwidth network connectivity to ensure high performance and rapid access to applications and data.
Public cloud is a multi-tenant environment where all customers pool and share the cloud provider’s data center infrastructure and other resources. In the world of the leading public cloud vendors, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, IBM Cloud®, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, these customers can number in the millions.
Most enterprises have moved portions of their computing infrastructure to the public cloud since public cloud services are elastic and readily scalable, flexibly adjusting to meet changing workload demands. The promise of greater efficiency and cost savings through paying only for what they use attracts customers to the public cloud. Still, others seek to reduce spending on hardware and on-premises infrastructure. Gartner predicts (link resides outside ibm.com) that by 2026, 75% of organizations will adopt a digital transformation model predicated on cloud as the fundamental underlying platform.
Private cloud
A private cloud is a cloud environment where all cloud infrastructure and computing resources are dedicated to one customer only. Private cloud combines many benefits of cloud computing—including elasticity, scalability and ease of service delivery—with the access control, security and resource customization of on-premises infrastructure.
A private cloud is typically hosted on-premises in the customer’s data center. However, it can also be hosted on an independent cloud provider’s infrastructure or built on rented infrastructure housed in an offsite data center.
Many companies choose a private cloud over a public cloud environment to meet their regulatory compliance requirements. Entities like government agencies, healthcare organizations and financial institutions often opt for private cloud settings for workloads that deal with confidential documents, personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, medical records, financial data or other sensitive data.
By building private cloud architecture according to cloud-native principles, an organization can quickly move workloads to a public cloud or run them within a hybrid cloud (see below) environment whenever ready.
Hybrid cloud
A hybrid cloud is just what it sounds like: a combination of public cloud, private cloud and on-premises environments. Specifically (and ideally), a hybrid cloud connects a combination of these three environments into a single, flexible infrastructure for running the organization’s applications and workloads.
At first, organizations turned to hybrid cloud computing models primarily to migrate portions of their on-premises data into private cloud infrastructure and then connect that infrastructure to public cloud infrastructure hosted off-premises by cloud vendors. This process was done through a packaged hybrid cloud solution like Red Hat® OpenShift® or middleware and IT management tools to create a "single pane of glass." Teams and administrators rely on this unified dashboard to view their applications, networks and systems.
Today, hybrid cloud architecture has expanded beyond physical connectivity and cloud migration to offer a flexible, secure and cost-effective environment that supports the portability and automated deployment of workloads across multiple environments. This feature enables an organization to meet its technical and business objectives more effectively and cost-efficiently than with a public or private cloud alone. For instance, a hybrid cloud environment is ideal for DevOps and other teams to develop and test web applications. This frees organizations from purchasing and expanding the on-premises physical hardware needed to run application testing, offering faster time to market. Once a team has developed an application in the public cloud, they may move it to a private cloud environment based on business needs or security factors.
A public cloud also allows companies to quickly scale resources in response to unplanned spikes in traffic without impacting private cloud workloads, a feature known as cloud bursting. Streaming channels like Amazon use cloud bursting to support the increased viewership traffic when they start new shows.
Most enterprise organizations today rely on a hybrid cloud model because it offers greater flexibility, scalability and cost optimization than traditional on-premises infrastructure setups. According to the IBM Transformation Index: State of Cloud, more than 77% of businesses and IT professionals have adopted a hybrid cloud approach.
To learn more about the differences between public, private and hybrid cloud, check out “Public cloud vs. private cloud vs. hybrid cloud: What’s the difference?”
Multicloud
Multicloud uses two or more clouds from two or more different cloud providers. A multicloud environment can be as simple as email SaaS from one vendor and image editing SaaS from another. But when enterprises talk about multicloud, they typically refer to using multiple cloud services—including SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services—from two or more leading public cloud providers.
Organizations choose multicloud to avoid vendor lock-in, to have more services to select from and to access more innovation. With multicloud, organizations can choose and customize a unique set of cloud features and services to meet their business needs. This freedom of choice includes selecting “best-of-breed” technologies from any CSP, as needed or as they emerge, rather than being locked into offering from a single vendor. For example, an organization may choose AWS for its global reach with web-hosting, IBM Cloud for data analytics and machine learning platforms and Microsoft Azure for its security features.
A multicloud environment also reduces exposure to licensing, security and compatibility issues that can result from "shadow IT"— any software, hardware or IT resource used on an enterprise network without the IT department’s approval and often without IT’s knowledge or oversight.
The modern hybrid multicloud
Today, most enterprise organizations use a hybrid multicloud model. Apart from the flexibility to choose the most cost-effective cloud service, hybrid multicloud offers the most control over workload deployment, enabling organizations to operate more efficiently, improve performance and optimize costs. According to an IBM® Institute for Business Value study, the value derived from a full hybrid multicloud platform technology and operating model at scale is two-and-a-half times the value derived from a single-platform, single-cloud vendor approach.
Yet the modern hybrid multicloud model comes with more complexity. The more clouds you use—each with its own management tools, data transmission rates and security protocols—the more difficult it can be to manage your environment. With over 97% of enterprises operating on more than one cloud and most organizations running 10 or more clouds, a hybrid cloud management approach has become crucial. Hybrid multicloud management platforms provide visibility across multiple provider clouds through a central dashboard where development teams can see their projects and deployments, operations teams can monitor clusters and nodes and the cybersecurity staff can monitor for threats.
Learn more about hybrid cloud management.
