What is Public Cloud?
A public cloud is a cloud computing environment where shared resources are offered by a third-party provider over the internet. These resources can include servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics and intelligence. Unlike private clouds, public clouds are shared by multiple organisations and individuals.
Benefits:
- Cost-efficiency: Pay-per-use model eliminates upfront investments in hardware and infrastructure.
- Scalability: Quickly adjust resources based on demand, without significant upfront costs.
- Global reach: Access to data and applications from anywhere with internet connectivity.
- Speed and agility: Rapid deployment of new applications and services.
- Focus on core competencies: Offload IT management to the cloud provider.
Use Cases:
- Development and testing: Creating and testing applications in a flexible and scalable environment.
- Disaster recovery: Backing up data and applications to a remote location for business continuity.
- Big data analytics: Processing and analysing large datasets using cloud-based tools.
- Software as a Service (SaaS): Accessing cloud-based applications like CRM, ERP and productivity suites.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Renting computing resources like servers, storage and networking.
Key Components:
- Cloud service providers: Companies that offer public cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
- Virtualisation: Creating multiple virtual machines on a single physical server.
- Self-service portal: Allowing users to provision and manage cloud resources independently.
- Security: Implementing robust security measures to protect data and applications.
- Networking: Providing connectivity between cloud resources and on-premises systems.
