Cloud Deployment Models: Advantages and Disadvantages

Whether you run an enterprise business or a startup, moving your workload location to the cloud makes a whole lot of sense in today’s time. Modern day business units can never function through the rigid structure of onsite workload location as its low on flexibility, devoid of many required features and high on costs.

Modern day cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure provide businesses with numerous advantages of moving to the cloud like the “pay as you go” model, ease of scalability, availability of modern tech features like containerization and more. So the migration of workloads, data, and storage and compute capabilities to the cloud is definitely on the cards for most of the business world, but are there any considerations that they need to take into account before making such a move?

Definitely, yes! Business who plan to move to the cloud must have a strategy in place that optimizes their workload migrations and delivers the most effective, cost efficient and responsive model that fits their bill perfectly. And how can a business get started on this? It’s simple, by finding out the best cloud deployment model for their requirements.

But what’s a cloud deployment model? To put it simply, every cloud configuration needs certain defined environment parameters to function like who owns it, what kind of scalability and responsiveness does it need to offer, the size of storage and compute resources required and the intended level of security it should afford to the business. The different kinds of such configurations are known as cloud deployment models.

Cloud deployment models ease up the process for business of knowing what different kind of cloud configurations suit different types of cloud environment parameters.

Currently, there are three different types of such cloud deployment models out there that are implemented widely by businesses across the globe.

Here’s a list detailing what each one of them entails and the specific advantages and disadvantages that they accrue to businesses who deploy them:

The Public Cloud Deployment Model:

To understand it simply, public clouds are the kind of cloud computing services that are available to everyone who wants to use them. In it, the working model is quite simple. The public cloud provider is the one who owns the servers, compute, data and storage resources, which it rents out to business.

The public cloud is the most popular cloud deployment model as it allows users to scale or detract resources whenever required with no additional costs. Public cloud providers follow a very simplistic model when it comes to pricing i.e. you pay for only what you use. All other costs related to installation and management of hardware and data centers responsible for running the public cloud are handled explicitly by the public cloud service provider.

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of a Public Cloud Deployment Model:

• Easy to use and deploy
• Highly flexibly and incredibly scalable
• Charges only for the resources utilized
• High ended support
• Availability of top tech tools and products
• No maintenance costs incurred by the user
• Free of charge usage for low ended requirements

Disadvantages of a Public Cloud Deployment Model:

• Data breaches or other security issues on one part of the system can affect everyone
• Not suitable for sensitive data and workloads storage

While, for a lot of years, many have argued that public clouds are vulnerable to security and downtime issues, this isn’t the case anymore. If you look at top cloud providers like AWS and Azure, they have a robust security infrastructure that’s probably even better than those afforded by private cloud models. On top of this, they don’t have too much downtime either.

And if you include the added feature of how these platforms are now offering an incredible product offering that includes access to big ticket technologies related to AI and Big data, which cannot be available in private cloud deployments due to resource limitations, and the case gets stronger in favor of public cloud deployment models.

The Private Cloud Deployment Model:

This cloud deployment model rose in popularity due to the numerous data breaches and cyber-attacks on public systems. Large corporations that have very sensitive data and workload environments cannot afford such breaches, so what they did is build a cloud deployment model that on a technical level, functions just like the public cloud, but all of its infrastructure resides inside a firewall protected environment.

While most firms manage their private cloud infrastructure themselves, there is also the availability of running your private cloud deployment model through a third party resource provider.

Here are the advantages of a private cloud deployment model:

• Higher control over resources and configurations
• Better security as compared to public cloud deployments

However, the private cloud deployment model has been falling out of favor even for business that want more robust security, due to how public cloud providers are offering the option of utilizing their model within a separate cloud space, with just some additional cost. AWS manages private cloud deployments for sensitive organizations like CIA through this very model.

By following such a model, you can do away with the cost intensive nature of running a private cloud deployment by supplementing it with a private cloud model managed by a public cloud provider.

However, for ensuring smooth functionality of such a model you will need your IT cloud team to go through a series of top tier certifications in order for them to understand the platform perfectly and align with your needs. Top tier cloud computing certifications are probably the best way to pursue the private cloud model in today’s time without overspending on the initiative.

Hybrid Cloud Deployment Model:

This model is becoming increasingly redundant in today’s time as well because it makes things complex and harder to manage, thereby unnecessarily elongating processes. In hybrid deployments, you utilize both, the public and private clouds and the reason to pursue such a model lies in the proposition that you have mission critical workloads that you intend to run on private clouds for security and control reasons, while you pushover the remaining workload requirements to the public cloud.

Proponents argue that this model provides inherent security and reduces downtime issues faced by critical workloads, but due to the rise in effectiveness of public cloud services, this argument has become increasingly redundant. Public clouds have much more robust security than such privately management ones, making the idea of utilizing both to manage different workloads inefficient.

Here are some advantages of Hybrid Cloud Deployments:

• Greater control and security over critical workloads
• Less cost intensive than just opting for a private cloud deployment while still leveraging most of the latter’s advantages

Which Model Is The Most Suitable?

Before making the move towards cloud migration, you need to conduct an intensive study on your workload requirements so that you can figure out which cloud deployment model is appropriate for you. There is no one size fits all approach to be followed here, so recommending one over the others wouldn’t be great advice.

Our recommendation is to narrow in your influencing factors for such a choice down to important variables like costs, security, availability of features etc. in order to ensure that the choice you make reaps the best rewards for your company and drives the efficiency you were priming for by moving to the cloud