Public Cloud vs Private Cloud

Attitudes towards cloud computing seem to be changing. Demand for public cloud services will continue to grow, but interest in using the public cloud infrastructure is lessening other than for software development. The driver for this is IT’s increasing desire for more advanced computing capabilities such as virtualisation.

This is the conclusion reached by InformationWeek following its latest State of Cloud Computing Survey. It found that only 26% of companies are likely to start using infrastructure as a service (down from 38% last year), while 48% (up from 40% last year) will use virtualisation technology providers for cloud computing over the next 12 months. This, concludes InformationWeek’s Charles Babcock, reflects “a heightened interest in the ‘private cloud’ inside the enterprise.”

Private clouds provide almost all of the public cloud benefits but without many of the drawbacks – the only negative element being the possible loss of some economies of scale. But against this the private cloud offers all the advantages of full virtualisation of servers, storage and desktops without any loss of control to a third party. All of the IT infrastructure, the hardware and software, remain owned or leased by the company. This arrangement allows the IT department to have visible control over their own devices and direct control over their security.

One of the strongest arguments in favour of the private cloud over the public cloud is data protection. Few companies can avoid storing personal data, even if that data is simply their own personnel files. But the public cloud and personal data are currently between a rock and a hard place: between the European data protection directives and the US Patriot Act. The EU effectively demands that EU personal data remains within the EU and is adequately protected, while the Patriot Act gives the American government the ability to demand any personal data from any American company wherever it is stored – and the majority of public cloud providers are American.

These two requirements are incompatible, and in their present form irreconcilable. It is no longer merely hypothetical since on January 16th the Norwegian Data Inspectorate declared use of Google’s email services (a public cloud) to be illegal in Norway because it contravenes Norwegian data protection laws – laws driven by the EU directives. The Norwegian ‘Notice of Decision’ specifically names data location and the Patriot Act as the two main problems. The same principles will apply to all public cloud offerings, but have no relevance to the private cloud.

So if cloud technology is imperative – and in today’s world it probably is – the obvious solution is to go for a private cloud. Even some of the lost economies of scale can be recouped by placing the private cloud with a colocation data centre provider, who can provide new economies in rental and power use, in support and maintenance, and in converting the cost from CapEx to OpEx. In short, a colocated private cloud can offer all of the advantages of cloud technology and flexibility without any of the drawbacks.

References:

Cloud Computing Buyers Demand More, Survey Finds (InformationWeek):

Use of Google Docs is illegal in Norway (Infosecurity Magazine):

Written by: Dean Clark