As organisations increasingly rely on data-driven decision making, the cloud has become the ideal place to store and process all their data. However, there are a number of options businesses have when it comes to the cloud: these are the public cloud, the private cloud and even a combination of the two, known as the hybrid cloud. In this post, we’ll focus on the private cloud and look at some of the benefits it offers to organisations.
What is the private cloud?
The term public cloud and private cloud describe how the cloud infrastructure is used. In the public cloud, the virtual servers of individual organisations are hosted on the vast data centre infrastructures of their providers. This multi-tenancy sharing of resources gives the provider the ability to offer customers the unlimited scalability that many of them demand.
Private cloud still offers the benefits of cloud hosting, including on-demand scalability, but rather than the organisation having its servers hosted on shared infrastructure, it has the private, single-tenancy use of its own hardware.
The benefits of private cloud
- Compliance
As private cloud infrastructure is solely for the use of a single customer, one of its most important benefits is helping organisations achieve compliance with data privacy regulations. Although the public cloud is a highly secure environment in its own right, the single tenancy of the private cloud makes it ideal for organisations that collect, store and process personal and sensitive data. Its isolation from other users gives assurance that threats that affect other tenants in a public cloud environment cannot impact their own security.
Additionally, the private cloud gives greater leeway for companies to deploy their cloud infrastructure in line with their own access-control and retention policies, giving them increased control over their data.
- Affordability
While the nature of the private cloud means it is generally more expensive to use than the public cloud, organisations still benefit from the fact that a hosted private cloud is significantly less expensive than creating one in-house. The heavy capital investment needed to build and run an on-site, private cloud datacentre isn’t needed in a hosted environment. As the vendor provides all the necessary infrastructure, organisations are left with a more manageable monthly fee for the service. This can work out far less costly. - Greater control
The single tenancy nature of a private cloud gives organisations increased control over their infrastructure and data. They can monitor their servers’ performance and use their own tools to predict issues and take action as they see necessary to prevent downtime.This extra control enables companies to customise their private cloud to suit their purposes. They can choose the infrastructure, networking and storage that meet their business and IT requirements, helping them to achieve their goals in the most effective way.
- Managed services
An important feature of a managed private cloud is that the vendor will carry out many of the server management tasks on the organisation’s behalf. This includes vital services, such as server and network monitoring, security, operating system updates and patching.
If required, it is possible to create bespoke managed IT solutions where the vendor undertakes a wider and more specific role in the management of the client’s environment. Vendors can work in partnership with the organisation’s IT teams, relieving them of many of the day-to-day burdens while assisting in more complex workloads and offering tailored technical support.
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DR and business continuity
The cloud is the ideal place for deploying disaster recovery and business continuity solutions. With a system hosted in the private cloud, remote backups can be done continuously and at speed, ensuring that entire systems have an up-to-date backup in place and that complete recovery can happen swiftly if a disaster occurs. For added security, modern backup solutions enable the data to be encrypted in transit and at rest and tested for integrity to ensure the data is not corrupted. - Geographical security
Sensitive and personal data needs to be located in countries where compliance is guaranteed. Some states, for security purposes, grant their law enforcement agencies the power to access data stored within their borders and this can result in the organisations affected breaching data protection regulations.
The way some vendors manage their public clouds means that virtual servers and the data stored on them can be moved across national borders, sometimes into non-complying countries. Private clouds, meanwhile, are usually housed in a single data centre. At eukhost, all our data centres are based in the UK, so whether you use our public or private cloud solutions, you will not be at risk of such non-compliance.
Conclusion
For organisations who want the benefits of cloud technology but need greater security and compliance and increased control over their infrastructure and data, the private cloud is the ideal solution. This also offers the possibility to create a hybrid cloud, utilising public and private clouds for the tasks they are best suited for.
For more information, visit our cloud hosting or enterprise solutions pages.
