What Is Public Cloud?

Public cloud is a cloud infrastructure provisioned for use by the general public, individuals or businesses. Essentially, third-party public cloud providers lease servers within a virtual environment, which is accessible over Internet. Users can then access these servers by purchasing public cloud services such as cloud servers, data storage, and other cloud-related services.

Public cloud is considered a cost-effective solution because you don’t need to buy or install physical servers. Public cloud also frees you from operation and maintenance (O&M) of servers, reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO). This allows you to develop your website or applications without worrying about O&M or purchasing additional hardware as you would with a private cloud solution. Public cloud also works on a “pay-as-you-go” model, which allows you to pay for only the resources that you need.

Everyone can benefit from using a public cloud solution in their IT infrastructure, but the benefits may vary based on the scale of your business. Public cloud helps small and medium sized businesses to speed up the software development process as they no longer need to worry about the management and maintenance of data centers. For larger enterprises, cloud computing helps businesses to scale up easily by providing virtually unlimited compute power and storage space. In short, public cloud is ideal for businesses that have fluctuating demands or applications dedicated to the public, like Gmail and Office 365.

Although public cloud is accessible to the public over the Internet, your data will be isolated from that of other users through virtualization. Public cloud providers may also provide different levels of isolation, including physical isolation, for additional security. Public cloud providers also proactively ensure that their servers are free from vulnerabilities and are updated with the latest software patches. However, customers are still ultimately responsible for how data is used in the cloud, including access, authentication, encryption, and application configuration.

Want to read more about security on public cloud?

Check our blog entry: Why public cloud is not a security concern