How to pick the right Cloud? We are often asked this question. And that's not surprising, because ‘only’ half of Dutch companies now use Cloud services (source: CBS). A large part of the remaining half still has an office-based IT environment, making them responsible for procurement, maintenance and management themselves. But, what if you decide you want to outsource because you no longer want to make expensive investments in hardware and you want to be able to focus on your core business and innovation? The first questions that are then asked are: ‘which Clouds are out there and what are the differences?’ And the most importantly: ‘which one should I choose?’
In this article, we explain the different types of Cloud and how you can determine in 5 steps which type of Cloud best suits your organisation.
The different types of Cloud
We distinguish four different types of Cloud, which are Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud and Multi Cloud. All four are briefly explained below.
Private Cloud by Fundaments
A Private Cloud is a tailor-made Cloud environment. With the hardware made available exclusively for your organisation, you receive guaranteed capacity and always have maximum control over the environment. This allows you to fully customise our Private Cloud to your needs and business activities. In addition, Fundaments takes care of the maintenance and management of the hardware and infrastructure.
Public Cloud
With a Public Cloud, the IT infrastructure is shared with other organisations. This provides great scalability, flexibility and global coverage. It is ideal for companies that expect peak times in service provision. They can then easily scale up their Cloud capacity and scale down again after the peak rush. Another big advantage of Public Cloud is that you only pay for what you use. Examples of Public Clouds are: AWS, Azure and Google.
Hybrid Cloud
A Hybrid Cloud is a combination of two Clouds, based on a Private and Public Cloud. This type of Cloud is ideal when there is regulation concerning, for example, the location of storage of part of the data, while other parts of the application used can be realised just fine through a globally scalable Public Cloud service. Another application of Hybrid Cloud can be sought in industrial automation; from a local Private Cloud, the control of a production line is combined with the provision of applications from a Public Cloud.
Multi Cloud
A Multi Cloud takes a step further than a Hybrid Cloud. With the Multi Cloud, multiple Cloud environments are used in one architecture. These can be Public and/or Private Clouds. Combining the right services and strengths of each Cloud creates the best foundation for each application and work environment.
The 5 steps to choosing the right Cloud
Every Cloud has its unique characteristics. And that is exactly what creates the Cloud-match you are looking for. You can determine which type of Cloud this is by asking yourself the 5 questions below.
1: What do I need the platform for?
Among Cloud users, we see two different types, namely a) Cloud-users: users of Cloud for providing a hosting service and b) Cloud-sellers: users of Cloud infrastructure for providing IT automation. For the first group, we see that integrating the application with the Cloud platform is very important: you would like to ensure that new code of an application is automatically deployed on the hosted platform. Public Cloud offers many different automation interfaces (APIs) for this purpose, allowing far-reaching automation. The Cloud platform must then be able to be programmed, just like the application: infrastructure as code is the clear trend in this. For Cloud sellers, a fixed price for a service is particularly important. And besides, the application landscape used within automation is often traditional and therefore fits well on a Private Cloud architecture.
2: Do you operate globally or only in the Netherlands?
For some organisations, it is of great importance that their data is ensured to reside in the Dutch Cloud. If this is an important requirement for your organisation, the Private Cloud is the best choice. Is this not a major requirement and do you operate globally? Then it's best to opt for a Public Cloud.
3: How innovative should the Cloud platform be?
Fundaments' Private Cloud is an innovative Cloud with highly flexible building blocks for servers, applications and services deployed as customised solutions. Perfect for Cloud sellers. However, if you want to innovate in application development, it's best to opt for Public Cloud. On AWS alone, you can leverage over 1,200 options for setting up a hosting platform, and this number is still growing every month. We often see that this is very important for Cloud users because of the continuous optimisation cycle used to develop an application. Through this integration, companies are able to accelerate tremendously.
4: How significant are scalability and flexibility to your organisation?
In this case, we look at the characteristics in use. Do you facilitate an office environment that needs to run from 08:00 to 17:00 five days a week? In that case, a Private Cloud is a great solution. Do you have certain peak moments, such as voting during a live show on Friday evening, or analyses of lap times during Formula 1? In that case, you are often better off opting for a Public Cloud because of its practically infinitely scalable capacity.
5: Do you conclude from the above that both a Public Cloud and Private Cloud have advantages for you?
If so, you could consider Hybrid Cloud. Being a combination between Public and Private Cloud, you get the best of both worlds. Additionally, are there any specific services provided by a Public Cloud provider that fit into the Hybrid Cloud scenario? Then you can also extend this scenario with Multi Cloud; because, why not use applications and mail from Azure, combine it with a self-developed application hosted with a serverless architecture in AWS and also host that legacy application on a piece of Private Cloud? Anything is possible.
As you can see: the possibilities are endless, as long as you have a good understanding of where all the benefits can be achieved. In addition, implementation of a scenario like this is often quite complicated; besides simply purchasing a service, think about the connections and their security. It is important to bring in an expert early on in order to reach the end goal in the Cloud journey as soon as possible and not get stuck in the very interesting, but also so complex set of possibilities.
