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Public Clouds in Cloud Computing

In the Cloud Industry, users have to choose from Public, Private, and Hybrid Cloud. In today’s article, we will discuss some topics related to Public Clouds. So, let us start reading.

What is Public Cloud?

A Public Cloud is a cloud computing type in which the cloud provider provides the resources to users with the help of the internet. But, remember the resources will vary from one cloud provider to another depending upon the storage capabilities, applications, or virtual machines. Public Cloud allows users with such excellent scalability options, which is almost impossible to achieve for organizations.

Public Cloud may offer its services free, or some cloud service providers follow the subscription model and pay-as-you-go model. Third-party provides computing services to the users. Unlike private Cloud, the company can reduce and save its expenses of purchasing and managing resources.

Users can deploy public Cloud at a faster rate as compared to on-premises. Some users doubt security concerns on public Cloud, but if the implementation is done correctly, public Cloud can be secure as a private Cloud. Cloud provider helps in providing proper security services such as intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPs).

Features of Public Cloud

The key features of public clouds are as follows:

  • It helps in reducing the IT organization costs to invest and maintain their own IT premises.
  • Users meet the scalability level according to the demands or requirements.
  • Only a few resources get wasted as customers follow a pay-as-you-go model for billing.

But, remember in the Public Cloud the same storage resources are being used by various users. Businesses, Universities, Government organizations, or their combinations popularly use Public Cloud. Some famous examples of Public Clouds are as follows:

  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
  • Microsoft Azure
  • IBMs Blue Cloud
  • Sun Cloud
  • Google Cloud

How does Public Cloud Works?

Currently, users popularly consider Public Cloud as an alternative development movement from traditional on-premises IT Architecture. Basically, the public Cloud is hosted and managed by a third-party provider and delivers the resources via the internet or a dedicated network. The Public cloud rings around many sets of technologies and their features. The critical characteristics of the Public Cloud are as follows:

  • It provides on-demand computing and self-service provisioning;
  • Resource pooling option is available
  • It has scalability and rapid elasticity
  • Billing is dependent on pay-per-use pricing;
  • It provides measured service
  • Resiliency and availability are accessible
  • Offers security
  • Public Cloud has broad network access.

The Public Cloud Provider provides a sufficient amount of infrastructure to the users for hosting and deploying its workload on the Cloud. Users can also enjoy working on tools and services that help their customers or users manage cloud applications. For example, storage of data, security, and monitoring services.

While choosing a cloud provider, companies can adopt renowned cloud providers such as AWS. Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Also, there are small cloud providers available in the market. Universal Cloud providers offer a wide range of availability and integration options. And Niche cloud providers offer more customizations options to users.

Public Cloud Architecture

A public cloud may be a fully virtualized environment that relies on high-bandwidth network connectivity to transmit data. Providers have a multi-tenant architecture that permits users or tenants to run workloads on shared infrastructure and use equivalent computing resources.

A tenant’s data within the public cloud is logically separated and remains isolated from the info of other tenants.

Providers operating cloud services are located in isolated locations within public cloud regions. These locations are known as availability zones, they may contain minimum two or more connected, highly available physical data centers.

Public cloud architecture is mainly categorized with the service model. Below are the three most popular service models:

1. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) – A third-party provider, hosts infrastructure components, like servers and storage, and a virtualization layer. The IaaS provider will provide the users with virtualized computing resources, such as VMs, over the web, otherwise with dedicated connections.

2. Platform as a service (PaaS) – In the second cloud service (PaaS), the third-party vendor takes the responsibility to deliver hardware and software tools basically required for application development, including operating systems as a service.

3. Software as a service (SaaS) – In SaaS, the cloud vendor hosts applications and makes them available to customers over the web.

Public Cloud Security

In today’s world, Modern Public Cloud providers consider security very strictly and seriously. Cloud providers recruit exceptional security staff to automate the process of security functions. It also helps in monitoring the system’s irregularity. It offers a strict policy to protect the data from being used by other clients. For an additional and increased level of security, organizations can purchase public Cloud in a hybridized environment.

Shared responsibility

The responsibility of Public cloud security is divided equally between the provider and user, outlined within a shared responsibility model. This framework designates the actual aspects of security and accountability for the provider and the user.

Some particular duties during a security agreement differ, depending upon the cloud provider and public cloud model. The cloud user is liable for securing anything that runs within the cloud, namely applications and customer data.

Public cloud security challenges

Organizations must understand numerous challenges associated with cloud security to guard cloud-hosted applications.

There is a requirement against external security issues in the public cloud, for example, malicious attacks and data breaches. It also requires internal security risks, for instance, misconfigured resources and access management policies.

Security tools and practices

Cloud vendors offer security services and technologies which include encryption and identity and access management (IAM) tools.

Cloud security monitoring may be a crucial piece of the safety strategy to supply threat detection. Security monitoring tools can help in performing scans and monitoring on the services and resources in the cloud environment. It also has the capability to generate alerts when a security issue takes place.

Access control is additionally critical to public cloud security. Found out strong IAM policies that allow only the required level of permissions.

Consistently update IAM policies and take away access for users that do not need specific permissions. Use multifactor authentication to bolster user verification.

Public Cloud History

The concept of Cloud Computing is in the 1960s. But it did not gain popularity for organizations until the 1990s. As of now, Salesforce is a top SaaS provider in the industry. It entered the market in 1999 with the help of applications through the website. Later it was followed by browser-based applications like G Suite, which can be used by several users.

In 2006, the famous cloud provider Amazon launched EC2 as an IaaS platform for the public. Aws rent virtual computers but use their own systems and applications.

After some time, Google came up with its App Engine as a PaaS service for application development. And Microsoft launched Azure as PaaS. In the future, all three cloud providers built IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS offerings. As time passed, popular Legacy Hardware vendors like IBM and Oracle also entered the competitive market.

Many vendors tried to be in competition but never succeeded. Cloud Service Providers like Verizon, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell, VMware, and other providers shut down their Public Cloud. While some other service providers changed their aim towards Hybrid Cloud and cloud management services.

The adoption of the Public Cloud helps users to expand their set of services. Technologies like AI, Machine Learning, IoT, and edge computing have moved to Public Cloud. A variety of Cloud Computing Approaches made an appearance in microservices, containers, and serverless computing.

Cloud experts believe Public Cloud Computing will call for more automation and specializations. Providers will provide the most minor and related services to meet user requirements. One of the famous examples is Quantum Computing will nurture and shape the future of the Public Cloud.

Categories of available public cloud services

1. Storage

Every Cloud provider offers three types of storage types like

  • block storage
  • object storage
  • file storage

The Amazon S3 object storage service will offer six storage tiers as follows:

  • S3 Standard
  • S3 Intelligent Tiering
  • S3 Standard-Infrequent Access
  • S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access
  • S3 Glacier
  • S3 Glacier Deep Archive-it varies by access frequency

AWS Cloud Storage services like Amazon Elastic Block Store and Amazon Elastic File System.

Microsoft Azure offers cloud storage as follows:

  • Azure Blob for object storage
  • Azure Files for file storage
  • Azure Disk for block storage.

Google Cloud Platform offers the following Cloud Storage solutions. They are as follows:

  • Cloud Storage for object storage
  • Filestore for file storage
  • Persistent Disk
  • Local SSD for block storage.

2. Serverless

The primary serverless products from the three global providers are as follows:

  • AWS Lambda
  • Azure Functions
  • Google Cloud Functions.

3. Containers

AWS will offer users the four container management offerings such as

  • Amazon Elastic Container Service
  • Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
  • Amazon Elastic Container Registry
  • AWS Fargate

Users have the authority to deploy containers manually on Amazon EC2 instances.

Microsoft’s Azure container management services are as follows:

  • Azure Kubernetes Service
  • Azure Container Registry
  • Azure Container Instances.

In Google Cloud Platform, the users have the provision to run containers on

  • Google Kubernetes Engine.
  • Google Cloud Run
  • Google Compute Engine.

Public cloud vendors also provide multiple tools and services to the users for

  • Networking
  • Monitoring
  • Analytics
  • Machine learning, and many more.

Public cloud pricing

Public cloud billing is based on a pay-as-you-go structure in which cloud users are billed for the resources used. This feature in Cloud Computing helps an organization reduce IT expenses because the organizations do not have to purchase and maintain the infrastructure. It will offer a more flexible solution to the business, as these operational spending decisions typically require less intensive reviews or budget planning.

Cost optimization strategies

For reducing cloud costs, organizations should adopt tools and methods that estimate costs and identify spending patterns. Cloud vendors offer users pricing calculators and price monitoring tools on their web portal, such as

  • AWS Cost Explorer.
  • Microsoft Azure Pricing Calculator
  • Google Cost Management.

Also, it offers a strong understanding of the selected cloud environment to assist right-size resources and pay just for what you would like.

Also, explore providers’ discount programs, like cheaper alternatives to on-demand resources.

Autoscaling is different to keep costs down. Autoscaling features adjust the application to scale to satisfy demand, which helps in avoiding the payment for unnecessary capacity usage.

Proper visibility into the cloud environment helps an organization’s IT teams identify and close the inactive workloads, which helps to avoid paying for unused resources and stop cloud sprawl.

Enterprises should always keep an eye on and monitor their cloud bill frequently. It will re-evaluate the cloud deployment models as it is a cost-efficient approach.

Advantages of Public Cloud

Advantages of Public Cloud

1. Less server management

If an organization adopts the public cloud service, the internal teams do not have to manage servers – as they are doing for legacy on-premises data centers or internal private clouds.

2. Security

Many startups might not have an accurate set of resources to implement strong security practices and measures. By adopting public cloud services, they will outsource some aspects of cybersecurity to a more significant provider with more resources.

3. Location Independent

If we discuss one more essential advantage of the public cloud, it is location-independent because its services are provided through the web portal of the cloud provider.

4. Access to new technologies

Organizations adopted cloud get instant access to the latest technologies, from automatically updated applications to machine learning and AI. Many cloud customers lack the resources to obtain such permits on their own.

5. Virtually unlimited scalability

Cloud capacity and resources rapidly expand to satisfy user demands and traffic spikes. Because of the various, logically separated cloud locations, users will experience higher redundancy and availability in Cloud Computing.

6. Flexibility

Public cloud storage enables users to store high volumes of knowledge and access them easily. Many organizations believe in the cloud for disaster recovery, creating multiple data copies and applications in case of emergency or outage. It’s tempting to store all data indefinitely. Still, users should find a knowledge retention policy that often deletes old data from storage to avoid long-term storage costs and take care of privacy.

7. Analytics

Public cloud services allow the users to perform analytics on high volumes of data and reside multiple data types to deliver business insights.

8. Costing

The cost of Public Cloud is cheaper as compared to private or hybrid Cloud as it shares the same resources with a massive amount of customers. Public Cloud is location-free because it can deliver its services with the help of the internet.

9. Save Time

Cloud service providers grab the responsibility to manage and maintain the data centers. In these data centers, data is stored, and cloud users can save their time to initiate connectivity. Also, it helps in deploying new services, releasing product updates, configuring and management of servers.

10. Quick and Easy Setup

Users or companies can purchase public Cloud with the help of the internet. They have the facility to deploy and configure it from a remote location through a cloud service provider in some hours.

11. Business Agility

Public Cloud is capable of resizing computing resources depending upon the requirements.

12. Scalability and Reliability

Public Cloud provides scalability and means easy to add and remove resources. And Public Cloud is reliable as it allows for 24*7 services at affordable pricing.

Challenges in Public Cloud

Challenges in Public Cloud

1. Security and compliance concerns

Multitenancy could be a priority for businesses that require to satisfy strict regulatory compliance standards. Multi Tenancy also comes with minimal risk of knowledge leakage, which can be more risk than some businesses in specialized fields are willing to tolerate.

It is a very difficult task to deploy equivalent security policies for an organization’s internal resources and for a public cloud.

2. Vendor lock-in

This is often always a priority with cloud technology. An organization that uses the cloud will economize and become more flexible.

Still, it also can find itself reliant upon the cloud vendor’s services – the virtual machines, storage, applications, and technologies they supply to take care of the operations.

3. Runaway costs

The increase in complex cloud costs and pricing models makes it difficult for organizations to track IT spending.

4. Scarce cloud expertise

The second most main challenge is the skills gap among IT professionals within the cloud computing industry. Companies struggle to rent and retain staff expertly in building and managing modern cloud applications.

Without an expert team, organizations face difficulties in handling the complexities.

5. Limited controls

In Cloud Computing, Factors like multi-tenancy and the challenges include data separation problems, latency issues for remote end-users, and adherence to industry- and country-specific regulations.

6. Low Security

Public Cloud is less secure than private and hybrid Cloud as its resources are shared with multiple clients.

7. Performance

The speed of the internet is a deciding factor for performance in Public Cloud.

8. Less Customizable

Public Cloud is not much as customizable as the Private Cloud.

Conclusion

Thus, Public Cloud helps users offer a cloud strategy that allows organizations to grow cost-efficiently. Many users have a question about security in Public Cloud, but as the popularity increases, users depend upon Public Cloud. Hosts take the security issue seriously.