Private-versus-public cloud computing

 

1. Amazon, as the first cloud computing provider, offers public cloud computing — anyone can use it.

2. Many IT organizations, when contemplating this new Amazon Web Services creature, asked why they couldn’t create and offer a service like AWS to their own users, hosted in their own data centers. This onpremise version became known as private cloud computing.

3. Continuing the trend, several hosting providers thought they could offer their IT customers a segregated part of their data centers and let customers build clouds there. This concept can also be considered private cloud computing because it’s dedicated to one user. On the other hand, because the data to and from this private cloud runs over a shared network, is the cloud truly private?

4. Finally, after one bright bulb noted that companies may not choose only public or private, the term hybrid was coined to refer to companies using both private and public cloud environments.