Introduction to Community Cloud
The field of an advanced version of virtualization has led to the development of Cloud Computing, and it plays a very crucial role in the IT Industry. Cloud Computing will offer the models like Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Community Cloud, and Bare Metal Cloud.
The concept of the Community Cloud is new and developing and in between Public Cloud and Private Cloud. Let us learn more about it.
What is a Community Cloud?
In Cloud Computing, the term community cloud means the shared set of cloud computing services. These services are available for a limited collection of organizations or employees. The banking sector is one of the best examples that use Community cloud services.
The planning strategy might differ while adopting the Community Cloud. Still, the members will share the same security features and maintain privacy, performance, and compliance requirements.
Basically, the Community cloud is managed and operated by a single organization or by many organizations in the community. The primary purpose of this fantastic concept is to authorize many customers to work on joint projects and applications where there is an essential requirement of centralized Cloud Infrastructure.
In simple words, Community Cloud is a dispersed infrastructure and helps solve the particular issues of businesses by joining the services offered by the different types of Cloud Providers.
The significant communities available in this project are tenders, organizations, and research companies that focus on the same problems in cloud interactions. The shared interests may have concepts and policies that depend on security and compliance topics and the project’s goals.
Community Cloud also helps users to identify and analyze their business requirements in a superior manner.
It is possible to host Community Cloud inside a data center also, and it can be owned by one of the tenants or with the help of a third-party cloud service provider. It can be either on-site or either it can be off-site.
Factors to be considered before adopting Community Cloud
Community Cloud helps in fulfilling the particular industry requirements while offering the cost-effective feature of Public Cloud. The Community cloud is depending on every individual need of the collaborating organizations.
If any organization is searching for a cost-effective talk, it will deal with minimum complications in the cloud environment. It will take the responsibility and make sure that the application’s security level on the Community Cloud Computing is appropriate.
But before adopting the Community Cloud, some factors have to be clarified before proceeding towards this Cloud Model, and they are as follows:
- The issues regarding the payments, maintenance, and capital expenditure should be made clear.
- The Availability and Service Level Agreements (SLA) factors should be made clear
- The factors like security handling provision while transferring the data among the engaging organizations
- The information related to Service Outage
Benefits of Community Cloud
1. Cost-Effective
Community Cloud is very cost-effective. The key reason behind this is that the whole cloud environment is being distributed and shared with multiple organizations or within a community.
2. Flexible and Scalable
The Community Cloud also has flexibility and Scalability as it can be adapted by every user. It authorizes the users to modify the documents according to their requirements.
3. Security
Security is considered to be a key feature in Community Cloud and as it is more secure compared to the Public Cloud. But obviously, it is less safe compared to the Private Cloud.
4. Shared Infrastructure
The organizations are authorized to share cloud resources, infrastructures, and other mechanisms among multiple organizations in Community Cloud.
5. Openness and Non-Partial
Community Clouds are open systems, and they erase the factors like dependency which organizations have to face with the Cloud Service Providers. Organizations can receive several benefits by avoiding disadvantages occurring in Public and Private Cloud.
6. High Availability and Reliability
Community Cloud protects the data in the same manner as the other cloud services do. It replicates the data and applications and resides in multiple secure locations from security issues and hacking.
Cloud Computing has an expandable infrastructure and assures that the data is available at any location at any moment. High Availability and Reliability are the main concerns in any cloud solution.
7. Security and Compliance
In Community Cloud the users are authorized to configure multiple security levels required for the data. Some of the chronic cases are mentioned below:
- Authority to Block users from editing and downloading particular datasets.
- Which devices have the permission to store sensitive and crucial data
8. Convenience and Controls
The issues on convenience and controls do not emerge in the Community Cloud. So, Democracy is the main factor provided by the Community Cloud.
All the tenants share and are the owners of the infrastructure and take the combined decisions. This setup permits the organizations to keep their data close to them and avoid Private Cloud issues.
9. Less Workload for the IT Department
If the data, applications, and systems are owned in the Cloud, the employees do not have to manage completely. This main benefit will remove the issue of hiring extra employees and managing the system.
Also, a self-managed solution will help in dividing the work among the involved organizations.
10. Sustainability to the Environment
By adopting Cloud Computing, the organizations utilize a single platform for all the requirements, and it discourages the organizations from investing a heavy amount in different cloud facilities.
As in Community Cloud, the organizations use the resources more efficiently, and it helps produce a smaller amount of carbon footprint. It will cause more minor damage to the environment.
Issues of Community Cloud
For every Organization, Community Cloud is not a good option
- The adoption rate of data is prolonged
- The amount of data storage is fixed, and the bandwidth is shared among all the members in the Community Cloud.
- It is costlier than Public Cloud.
- Sharing responsibilities is very difficult within organizations.
Security Factor Considerations
- Every user in the Community Cloud is allowed to access the data. Thus, the organizations, should be assured that their sensitive data doesn’t get shared.
- In Cloud Computing, rules and regulations are very confusing.
- The agreements made between the organization members in Community Cloud are essential.
Conclusion
According to the researchers and analysts, there is no guarantee in the future whether this Cloud Computing Model will be as popular as Public Cloud and Private Cloud. The only advantage of the Community Cloud is that it can successfully meet and fulfill the teams’ requirements.
However, as Cloud Computing is becoming very popular and is expanding with new technology, it will continue to help users with their best service models and infrastructure.
The exposure of new Cloud solutions like Community Cloud and Bare Metal Cloud will mark its industry identity. Cloud Computing- Community Clouds