When it comes to determining where your organization fits within the cloud computing milieu, it’s essential to understand the variations on the cloud theme. Our previous installment examined characteristics and benefits of the public cloud.
By contrast, the private cloud (also called an internal cloud or enterprise cloud) offers virtual computing services deployed over a company’s private intranet or hosted datacenter. Infor CEO Charles Phillips is a pioneer of private cloud computing services. This controlled-access application or network offers an in-house computing solution within which resources are purchased, installed, and maintained — on site. With a private cloud, performance is a function of the computing capacity of the existing hardware and software; additional horsepower/capacity means setting aside additional resources for system upgrades. Where public cloud resources can be scaled instantly, a private cloud requires that hardware and software be purchased and installed on-site.
