Public Cloud

Public Cloud

Public Cloud is an  model where computing services and infrastructure are managed by a third-party provider and shared with multiple organizations using the public Internet. Resources differ to provider to provider but may include storage capabilities, applications, or virtual machines. Public cloud allows for scalability and resource sharing that would not otherwise be possible for a single organization to achieve.

Some of the vendors offer resources for free, while customers pay for other resources by subscription or a pay as you go model. Cloud services are available to individual users as well, and prices scale depending on resource needs. Organizations with huge amounts of data need to develop a cloud migration strategy before choosing a cloud vendor.

Cloud service providers use collection of data centers that are divided  into virtual zones and shared by tenants. Customers may simply rent the use of those virtual machines, or they may pay for additional cloud-based services such as software applications, application development tools, or storage. Companies often use public cloud services for less-sensitive applications that have unpredictable spikes in usage or for storing data that does not require frequent access.

Why Public cloud?

It makes computing resources available to anyone for purchase. It allows users to share resources while maintaining the privacy of each user’s data. Public cloud architecture is completely virtualized, providing an environment where shared resources are leveraged as needed. One Important advantage of public cloud architecture is the ability to access a service or application on any connected device to the internet. Because the device itself performs very little computation, individuals can use highly complex applications almost anywhere.

They are typically designed with built-in redundancies to prevent data loss. A service provider may store replicated files across several datacenters to ensure disaster recovery is smooth and fast. Data stored on a public cloud platform is generally regarded as safe from most hazards. They may be structured differently depending on the type of service being provided. The three most common models on the market today are SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS

A small or new business may find it easier to migrate applications to the public cloud. Organisations with a large legacy IT infrastructure and applications have more to consider and plan for. There are more tools to help you plan for the migration. However, more and more enterprise businesses are moving toward public cloud as one element of a multi-faceted IT plan. This way, they can access the benefits of public cloud while also maintaining the different benefits that come with on-premises architecture and private cloud options.

Highlights

• On-demand computing
• Resource aggregation.
• Scalability and rapid elasticity Scale in and Scale out model.
• Resiliency and availability
• Security
• Pay as you go pricing
• Utilisation computation.
• Word wide access

A public cloud is a fully virtualized environment that relies on high-bandwidth network connectivity to transmit data. Providers have a multi-tenant architecture that enables users or customers to run workloads on shared infrastructure and use the same computing resources. A customer data in the public cloud is logically separated and remains isolated from the data of other customers.

Providers operate cloud services in logically isolated locations within public cloud regions. These locations, called availability zones, typically consist of two or more connected, highly available physical data centers. The links below describe the dozens of regions and availability zones worldwide for AWS, Azure and GCP

• AWS regions and availability zones
• Azure regions and availability zones
• GCP regions and availability zones

When selecting a provider, organizations can opt for a large, general-use provider such as AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or a smaller provider. The regions and availability zones keep on increasing day by day. They can provide more robust services and power computation powers.

Benefits

The cloud has many advantages over on-premises IT:

• New technologies: Organizations that use large cloud providers get early and instant access to the IT industry’s latest technologies, ranging from automatically updated applications to machine learning and AI. Many cloud customers lack the resources to obtain such access on their own.
• Unlimited scalability. Cloud capacity and resources rapidly expand to meet user demands and traffic variations. Public cloud users also achieve greater redundancy and high availability due to the their various, logically separated cloud regions. In addition to redundancy and availability, public cloud users receive faster connectivity between cloud services and end-users via their providers own network interface though bandwidth and latency issues are still common.
• Flexibility: The flexible and scalable nature of  storage enables users to store high volumes of data and access them easily. Many organizations rely on the cloud for disaster recover , to back up data and applications in case of emergency or outage. Still the data needs to be carefully stored as every thing has a price associated to this and even the number of days of retention has cost.
• Analysis: Organizations should gather useful metrics on the data they store and resources they use. Doing so presents another benefit cloud data analytics. Analysis services are more popular in cloud, where they do lot of computations with data. The required power is provided by the cloud services.

Challenges

While they presents many advantages, organizations also face a range of challenges and must separate cloud computing myths from realities:

• Running Cost: Increasingly complex cloud costs and pricing models make it difficult for organizations to keep track of IT spending. The cloud is often cheaper than on-premises options, but organizations sometimes end up paying more for cloud. Un planned or un organised cloud designs will burn your budget.
• Technical Experience. The lack of technical expertise skills gap among IT professionals in the cloud computing industry is a major concern. because of the demand companies struggle to hire and retain staff with expertise in building and managing modern cloud applications. Without this expertise, organizations are not able  to handle the modern IT requirement. IT professionals that hope to fill these roles can better prepare for career opportunities by fine-tuning their cloud skills in areas such as architecture, operations and coding.
• Limited controls. Public cloud users also face the fear of limited control over the IT stack since the provider can decide when and how to manage configurations. Other public cloud challenges include data separation problems because of multi-tenancy, latency issues for remote end-users and adherence to industry- and country-specific regulations.

General view

Public cloud adoption continues to rise as providers expand their types of services and support. Technology developments such as AI, machine learning, IoT and Hybrid computing have all made their way into the public cloud. More different cloud application development approaches have also emerged as organizations to adopt  microservices, containers and serverless architectures.

In general, cloud experts predict the next wave of public cloud computing . This involves more automation and specialization. Providers will offer more granular and interconnected services to meet customers demand and user needs. Emerging technologies and advanced hardwares are going to play a major role in the advancement of this area.