Dear Almabruk,

Markets have a tendency to switch from ownership paradigm to utilization paradigm and vice versa in the context of computing.

When the world still belonged to main frames, there was no concept of computer ownership. We all utilized a centralized mainframe God's computing capability. But soon mini computers and then PCs came and the world swung from centralized to decentralized. Suddenly everyone wanted to 'own' their own computer. That went on for a few decades and now we are back to utilization with the arrival of cloud computing! The world is swinging back to a virtual and centralized 'on-the-cloud' computing solution.

The question of private OR public clouds is a direct fall out of this ying-yang philosophy.  People who want a clear centralization of computing and want to pay only for what they use would go the public way. People who still want to have a semblance of control and yet have a pooled and localized computing system would moot for the private cloud. The question is how much an individual would let go. 

The information that the organizations have to be ready with in the private OR public clouds context is a function of this duality in behavior.

Thank you Easwar Krishna Iyer. I think implementing ERP in any organization would matter in many aspects other than private or public. There are other factors that must  be considered.  

Hi Almabruk,

Some factors / information to consider before moving a particular app to private or public cloud include:

1) Security - e.g. confidentiality, encryption, proprietary authentication, authorization, accounting etc. (generally private cloud has relatively stronger security features)

2) Regulatory - e.g. some government regulations / policies might not encourage to move to public cloud

3) Cost - generally public cloud offer lower cost than private cloud due to better leverage and economy of scale

4) Apps Readiness - whether the apps can function in public cloud mode e.g. support multi-tenancy (different customers), willingness of the app vendor / its business model to support multi-tenancy in public cloud mode

5) Service Availability - e.g. some public clouds might not have the required high availability / SLA expected even though is cost justified vs private cloud

6) Internet Suitability - e.g. bandwidth, latency, certain Internet protocols might discourage some apps move to public cloud

7) Intranet Integration - some apps can move to public cloud, but due to their required integration with other key / critical apps which are running on private cloud, they might be decided / better not to move to public cloud by management

Regards,

Fung

To add to information from Fung,

1) majority of public clouds are used for development systems where security and compliance is not an issue.  They provide economical way to go for development via utility model (pay as you go), no contracts, shared hardware (No PCI or SOX requirement, self managed and you have no control over hardware performance.  

Private cloud on the other hand is a single-tenant environment with high level of security, compliance (SO, PCI, HIPPA), customizable (can customize network, hardware performance), and requirements for Hybrid Deployments, that is, dedicated server is required for to run high speed database application and that HW can be integrated into private cloud hence hybrid solution between virtual servers and dedicated servers.

I comes down to different levels of security and management requirements to choose public, private or hybrid cloud solution