Your cloud infrastructure will directly determine how well your software business manages its IT resources. With businesses increasingly shifting to cloud-based solutions, this introduces a new dilemma of whether private cloud or public cloud better align with your business goals.
Popular cloud deployment models include private, public, and hybrid clouds. Each of these options has its benefits, challenges, and ideal use cases. If you’re a software company ready to migrate to the cloud, which is the best one for you?
The ideal choice depends on your business’ needs in terms of security, performance, and control. Before you make the choice, you’ll want to understand the fundamental differences between public vs private cloud infrastructure, which we’ll share in this piece.
Understanding Popular Cloud Deployment Models
Cloud models are a part of cloud computing, which is the system of delivering computing resources over the internet. Instead of physical servers, many software businesses rely on cloud services to store their data, develop software, and run applications.
What is a Private Cloud?
A private cloud is a computing environment that hosts a single organisation. It’s either hosted on the organisation’s premises or at a third-party data centre, making it ideal for businesses that need better security and control over sensitive data. Organisations in healthcare, finance, and government services typically prefer private cloud providers to meet their security and compliance needs.
What is a Public Cloud?
A public cloud offers a computing environment that’s shared among multiple organisations. You can access shared resources on the cloud provider’s infrastructure, allowing you to pay only for what you need. Whilst the cloud environment will still be private to your organisation, you will likely share server space with other organisations.
Private Cloud or Public Cloud – Key Differences
Ownership and Control of Infrastructure
In a public cloud model, the third-party provider owns and maintains the cloud infrastructure, which is shared across multiple customers. The private cloud model offers dedicated cloud hosting infrastructure, allowing software businesses complete control over security protocols and configurations.
Impact of Cost and Budget
Most public cloud providers offer a pay-as-you-go model with monthly costs that lower the upfront cost of setting up cloud infrastructure. On the other hand, a private cloud costs slightly more with a higher initial investment, but puts you in total control of ongoing costs and maintenance.
Security and Compliance
Private cloud services are known for their highly secure infrastructure, allowing businesses more control and helping meet stringent compliance requirements.
In contrast, although public cloud services are secure, sharing infrastructure with other businesses using these services opens data exposure risks.
Data Residency and Compliance
Public cloud service providers often store your data in data centres across geographies, raising GDPR and date legislation concerns and the need to follow jurisdictional regulations.
Private cloud service providers let you decide where your data resides, allowing your business to comply with data sovereignty laws.
Performance
Public clouds are designed for high availability and performance but may fall short in terms of latency, depending on the network connectivity and geography. You can rely on private clouds for high-performing and reliable networks.
Scalability
When you’re selecting a private cloud or public cloud infrastructure, you also need to consider its scalability. Public cloud providers may provide you with virtually unlimited scalability with elastic resources. Whilst private clouds are also infinitely scalable, you will need to supply and manage any hardware upgrades. If you are looking to enjoy the scalability of public cloud, speak to our team about our private managed cloud service.
Management and Maintenance
Public cloud services are in full control of your cloud’s hardware maintenance, updates, and patches. Comparably, private cloud hosts depend on in-house or managed service providers for admin, maintenance, and update tasks.
Vendor Lock-In
Before committing to a cloud service, bear in mind the vendor lock-in. This concern weighs heavily on businesses that opt for public cloud services. Vendor lock-in can make it much more difficult and expensive to migrate to a different service in the future if needed. If you are looking to migrate away from a public cloud provider, this is something we can support with.
In contrast, private cloud services are more flexible in this regard, moving away from lock-ins and offering easy portability and migration options.
Strategic Autonomy and Sovereignty
Public cloud may set limits on the movement of your data with little to no customisations. You can enjoy high levels of flexibility with your private cloud subscription, especially with data sovereignty being favoured by European firms.
Public vs Private Cloud for Software Companies – Factors to Consider
Here are a few key factors to consider before choosing between a private cloud and a public cloud.
Business Size and Growth Projections
For fast-growing software businesses with fluctuating workloads, public clouds are great for scaling up, compared to private cloud services. However, private cloud service providers, like BlackBox Hosting, do offer the option to scale at cost-effective prices without compromising on data stability and security, giving you the best of both worlds.
Level of Security and Control
Software businesses handle sensitive data, making security and compliance highly important. If you’re looking for more granular control and autonomy over your data and services, a private cloud may be the ideal option.
Budget Constraints
If you’re a mid to large-sized organisation offering software development and IT services like SaaS, and you have a flexible budget, you probably want to choose private cloud, over public cloud. Private cloud can better support long-term budgeting, while public clouds may be more affordable for the short term.
Benchmarked against Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS, you could save up to 43% and 50% of your investment costs in our private managed cloud compared to a public cloud.
Latency
If you’re running latency-sensitive applications, private cloud will almost always outperform public. With 99.999% uptime and zero downtime in the last 10 years, you can count on BlackBox Hosting’s private cloud services for your software business.
How BlackBox Hosting Supports Your Private Cloud Strategy
We recommend you weigh all the above factors before deciding on the best cloud service solution for your business. With the right cloud for your software business, you’ll not only create the ideal cloud environment but also be able to effectively use cloud computing to drive growth and innovation.
Are you leaning towards private cloud hosting but have concerns about the high costs?
Our private cloud costs about 50% less than the public cloud, with no hidden fees or surprise charges. Get more out of your cloud investment with our fully managed private cloud services, with VPS security and performance that has never seen an outage in 10 years. And with our robust and reliable DDoS protection, you can keep your data secure at no extra cost.
Get in touch with us for a free consultation and learn how we can transform your software business. Call us on +44(0)203 740 7840 or contact us today.
