Yes it’s true, the future of the cloud is looking bright and very sunny. These days, we do almost everything in the cloud. And sometimes as a user you may not even realize you’re using a cloud solution. But one cloud is not like another. And not all of them are as safe to use as the others.
One singular cloud does not exist. A software vendor may use the cloud to store their corresponding data such as Microsoft Office 365 or Adobe Creative Cloud. But that’s a different cloud than the one that your web server runs on. And yes, that’s actually in the cloud too, even if it’s with your provider. In fact, even cloud systems may differ.
Are you in complete control of the cloud? Or do you use a service with a cloud supplier that takes care of everything for you? Let’s look at the differences between the clouds.
Private cloud
Basically a private cloud is made of systems that are located within the (virtual) walls of an organization. ‘Virtual’ is in brackets because it does not necessarily mean the data is actually stored within the brick-and-mortar walls of an organization. It’s possible. But as a rule, these servers are located in a data center, which is only accessible to a particular company. These are not located within the walls, rather within the firewall. The servers are also physically separated from other servers: this way you don’t need to share hardware. It’s a secure solution, clearly.
Public cloud
You use public cloud solutions for data, web hosting, email and more that are on servers shared by multiple users. And you only get a small amount of computing power and storage for your subscriptions to public cloud solutions. The main difference with a private cloud solution is that you can very limited in your ability to perform or customize anything.
Public cloud vendors configure a service and offer a choice between ‘small, medium and large’ options. The advantage is that you can often scale up quickly because you pay per employee, per month such as with a VoIP service. And you can easily cancel your monthly subscription.
Hybrid cloud
And you guessed it… a hybrid cloud is a one-size-fits-all model, which is a huge pet peeve for anyone working in the world of IT. Hybrid cloud solutions are both private and public. Who uses this type of cloud? Private clouds are expensive, so a hybrid solution is ideal if you want to save costs by doing other things that are possible in a public cloud. Integration can go a long way. You can run the workload processes of a program in a public cloud, while your data is processed securely behind your firewall.
Easy Software Deployment and the cloud
Naturally, there’s a reason we’re talking about the cloud here at Easy Software Deployment. In the current version of Easy Software Deployment, we support a private cloud through our Cloud Options. This gives you your own web server that the Agents communicate with when they are not on the internal network.
With Cloud Options, you can perform software rollout and management tasks even if a user’s computer is not on the internal network, but is connected through the Internet. In version 7, the Agent will connect to our own cloud service. This way, when a computer is online, all tasks are picked up directly from the cloud.
Stay tuned to learn more about our Cloud Solutions.
Do you have any questions, or would you like to tell us something? Do not hesitate to contact us. Or leave a comment.