What Is A Private Cloud And What Are Its Benefits?

There are many misconceptions surrounding the private cloud.

For example, many people tend to believe that — since a private cloud is “private” — it must be hosted on–site (thereby, making it more private). But that’s not exactly true.

In a hosted private cloud model, the infrastructure, data center facilities, power and cooling and a variety of services and security options are provided by a service provider.

– SingleHop

A private cloud can be on- or off-site, and it can provide your company with a variety of long-term benefits. It operates similar to a public cloud but resources are simply managed differently.

Private clouds are pools of virtual resources—sourced from systems dedicated to and managed by the people using them—that can be automatically provisioned and allocated through a self-service interface. They are defined by privacy settings and management responsibilities—not location or ownership. So long as the resources are dedicated to a single customer with isolated access, on-site or off-site infrastructure can power private clouds.

– RedHat

What are the key benefits of a private cloud?

The cloud offers a variety of benefits. This is true both for public and private cloud infrastructure. While some benefits (like management and cost-efficiency) might not be as great in one cloud versus the other, other benefits (like scalability and performance) are very much present.

Let’s take a quick look at the primary benefits of a private cloud.

Security and control

Many organizations decide to go with a private cloud because they’re confined to a specific set of requirements. Although a public cloud is secure, it doesn’t offer the same level of control, customization, and privacy that a private cloud can offer.

However, this doesn’t mean that just anyone can tap into a public cloud and access the information stored in it. Resources are “private” in a public cloud; they’re just shared (theoretically reducing privacy).

A private cloud is a dedicated environment that delivers similar advantages to public cloud. A private cloud is located at a data center operated by either an organization or a hosting service provider. Relative to other solutions, private clouds provide strong control and security over its apps, data and systems while offering cloud-like agility.

– Rackspace

Performance and efficiency

In general, the cloud typically offers greater resource efficiency — and this remains consistent from public to private. In some cases, however, a private cloud might be more efficient than a public cloud.

This is because you’re pooling resources that are only dedicated to your organization.

The resources of a private cloud are entirely at the disposal of the cloud’s owner, removing any risk of resource or capacity contention. At the virtual layer, scaling is as simple as deploying and configuring new cloud servers. At the physical layer, new bare metal servers can be quickly added to increase the overall capacity of the cloud platform.

– Steadfast

Related Content: The two biggest differences between public and private clouds

How to reap the benefits of a private cloud

If you’re looking to migrate to a private cloud environment, it’s important to do your homework first. Research managed cloud providers and what they offer, the various platforms and how they can support your organization, and the pros and cons of both onsite and offsite hosting.

If you’d like to keep reading, take a look at IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

What is a private cloud and what are the benefits?

Rebecca Moore

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