Public, Private & Hybrid Cloud Communications: What's the Difference?

The advantages of a public cloud platform can be summed up in three words: simplicity, scale and savings.

Simplicity - No on-site maintenance is required. The provider takes care of all of this.

Scalability - Your services can be upgraded depending on your businesses’ needs

Savings - No need to provide power or allocate space for servers or additional hardware.

It’s simple to manage because all of the hardware and software is managed by your cloud provider. It scales up or down as your needs change. And it saves you money in OpEx, CapEx and excess capacity for peak demand periods.

> Essential Guide to Public Cloud for Business Communications

Private cloud is similar to public cloud, but rather than be made generally to the public, services are offered within an internal, private network. 

When security is your chief concern, it’s time to think about a private cloud. A private cloud can leverage virtualization and converged infrastructure for cloud-like scale and efficiency, but in a private, dedicated system within your own data center.

The protected nature of a private cloud provides an extra layer of security and control to meet industry-specific compliance requirements.

A private cloud is implemented within the secure confines of a firewall, most likely your own company firewall, and is only accessible by your business. One pro of a private cloud is security. With total control of who and what can access the information within your private cloud environment, you significantly mitigate the risk of a data breach.

The downside is that you’re on the hook to ensure that your network can withstand the risk of a possible data breach, or at least detect it early. So, redundancy is not as failsafe as it could be if you were in a hybrid cloud environment.

By combining public and private cloud, hybrid cloud is an infrastructure that ties these two together. More information on that here.

A hybrid cloud can provide the best of both worlds: security with scalability, less complexity with more control. With a hybrid cloud deployment, you can find the perfect balance of public and private clouds to meet your needs. This could greatly benefit those working from home. By providing remote work solutions, business continuity is held intact while retaining the same security features in the office.
It can also provide a convenient path to migration if rip-and-replace isn’t realistic across your entire business all at once.

> Essential Guide to Hybrid Cloud for Business Communications

Hybrid cloud can refer to a mix of public and private cloud or a mix between cloud and on-premises systems so you have more redundancy capabilities.

This deployment makes sense for businesses that don’t necessarily want to give up the benefits and control that come with an on-premises or private cloud communications system, but perhaps want to become more agile with how they deploy and manage communications applications—think unified communications for mobility and productivity and even contact center features.