Public Cloud Safer than Private?
Public Cloud Highway - all aboard!
I read in an IT-focused blog the idea that a public cloud, for example, Google or Amazon Web Services, could be safer than a private one — that is, one behind the security of a firewall within an enterprise.
Wow; that’s a statement worth taking note of! After all, there are certainly plenty of companies out there, especially small and mid-size firms, that want to use public clouds because they don’t require much of an investment, with pay-as-you-go schemes. This sounds like a bit of encouragement!
But what’s the rationale behind this belief in the superiority (safety-wise, anyway) of public clouds? Here’s what it comes down to: building a private cloud is no easy task, and companies without the expertise can screw it up.
According to the article, Joe McKendrick, lead analyst for Unisphere Research, the market research arm of Unisphere Media, said: ”One of the major show-stoppers so far with public cloud is fears about putting your data and your business out with an outside third-party provider. There’s a lot of discussion about private cloud where companies basically assemble their own clouds and provide their own online services across the enterprise as a remedy for this. They believe that because the data and applications stay within the bounds of the enterprise, there’s a little bit more control. But the problem is then that there aren’t enough controls within the enterprise to guard this data.”
McKendrick noted: “The foundation of private cloud is essentially having the enterprise make data and applications accessible to anybody across the enterprise who needs it and there are a lot of questions that raises.”
Yes, public clouds have teams of experts devoted to keeping data safe and apps running like a Swiss train, but they stumble and fall, too, going down and, in the process, compromising companies’ web businesses or schools’ content. In short: making the end user unhappy and the customer mad as hell.
No matter what you believe — whether you’re in the public or private cloud camp — you need extra protection, and that’s where monitoring services come in. They’re affordable (because like the Cloud, you pay as you go), and they quickly notify you if your cloud service is out for the count. And that enables you to plug in other resources to keep your business going and, at the same time, monitor your SLAs with your supplier.
My advice: whichever way you go, keep your eyes open.
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