What Is Public Cloud? & 4 Basic Features Of Public Cloud

Defining Public Cloud

When we talk about public cloud, what does it refer? Well, if you focus on the term, public means accessible to all the users across the globe. Thus, a public cloud is constructed with a view to offer unlimited storage space and increased bandwidth via Internet to all businesses. It is usually an open system that is available for free to general public via World Wide Web or Internet. Some of the popular examples of public clouds include Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute, Google App Engine, Blue Cloud by IBM and Azure services Platform by Windows.

However, whether it is public, private or hybrid cloud one fundamental principle follows for all of them and that is to encourage and promote virtual work environment over the existing physical one. It is different than other two models of cloud as the focus laid is upon general public than concentrating on a niche public.

Characteristic Features of Public Cloud

To talk about its features they are similar to those of a private or a hybrid cloud. This means a highly scalable environment with 99.99 % uptime and an efficient disaster recovery and data backup plan is what we get in a public cloud as well. But what that one thing that needs to be focused upon in this type of cloud? Did you just say users can be independent along with the immense elasticity? If you think so you are approaching in the right direction.

Public cloud caters to four basic characteristics that are as follows:

Flexible and Elastic Environment

Public clouds like Google App engine or Amazon elastic cloud compute offers its users highly flexible cloud environment. They enable users to share and store data as per their personal capacities. They can decide what to share and what not to share with their clients.

Freedom of Self-Service

Public clouds like these encourage users to create a cloud on their own without taking anyone's help. These are pre-configured clouds existing on Internet. The only thing businesses that wish to opt for public cloud need to do is to visit public cloud portals and get started with it. You don't have to depend upon on any third party help to create or run this type of cloud. It will be managed and handled by you as you will be the prime proprietor of it.

Let us explain the concept of self-service portal with an example for better understanding:

Example: Suppose you don't want to share your information or store several confidential office files in the computer system you have been working on. So what would you do in order to share those files with a client of yours? Will you send a bulk mail? Of course you can do that but does it actually make an impact to your existing business? Probably not much of a difference would it make, instead there will be a hassle to manage individual client with traditional IT methods. So, there has to be an efficient way out to handle such situations in the smoothest way possible.

Solution: Try using Google Apps Engine. A perfect example of a public cloud caters to all kind of requirements from small, medium or big businesses. The application is framed in such a manner so that businesses can have device independence. Keeping a track of all the events, scheduling meetings, sharing and accessing files gets easy giving rise to high scalability and balanced loading.

Pay for what you Use

This particular characteristic enables cloud technology more accessible for businesses to work in a synchronized fashion. The more you use cloud services, better will be the future business prospects. However, payment is charged on the basis of cloud services used by users.

Availability and Reliability
Yet another feature of public cloud is that, it is available to all and believes in agility. You can catch up with your work any time you wish and from any corner of the globe. Not only users become more independent in running important business tasks but also more efficient in strengthening customer relations across the globe.

How secure is Public Cloud?

Security concerns for cloud technology were always a matter for consideration for IT professionals and researchers. Whether it is public, private or hybrid cloud, securing data was utmost priority of cloud providers and its managed services so that they offer customers a reliable and flexible cloud environment. Although, advancements and innovations are still on the verge of improving public cloud platform, the already existing tools like encryption methods have also done a good job regarding its security.

Disaster recovery and data backup plans should also be made strong and more viable so that intense situations like cloud collapse or data crash could be handled or managed with ease and less efforts.

Thus, grabbing cloud technology is the key to sure shot successful business. All you require is hired managed cloud services along with professional work force that can drive your business to heights you've never imagined before.