Applications in the Clouds

Applications in the clouds

With so many vendors jumping into the cloud-computing fray, promising the world and then some, deciphering what’s real and what’s not can be difficult for even the most seasoned IT professionals. To help businesses make the decision on what vendor or solution best fits their IT needs I will outline what applications are suitable for public, private and hybrid clouds.

Whether operated and hosted by the enterprise IT department or by an external provider, a private cloud is for the exclusive use of a single organisation. Private clouds are best suited for those concerned about privacy, security and management implications when putting sensitive corporate data onto a shared, public infrastructure. The private cloud gives reassurance to businesses over these issues, as it provides more control to the IT department responsible for maintaining this environment. Unsurprisingly, collaboration, email and other communications applications join HR and financial software as some of the most popular deployments in the private cloud.

Public clouds are open to any number of organisations and individual users who wish to use them. They require no capital investment, enabling agility and efficiency with vast scale. The added benefit of providers offering pay-as-you-go solutions is that it gives businesses the flexibility and affordability that IT departments require in this changing landscape. The shared nature of these resources does raise security concerns, as well as issues surrounding vendor lock-in. With all the attention surrounding the security issues of the public cloud, the applications to use are more likely to be generic business apps and non-sensitive data. Applications that aren’t mission critical may not warrant the use of the dedicated infrastructure that the private cloud provides and using a public cloud may be more efficient and cost effective. This may not be the trend for too long as public cloud providers are determined to