What cloud is best for your practice?

What most people fail to realize is that it isn’t one cloud fits all. There are many clouds and many ways to structure them. Choose your cloud based on your business interactions—with employees, clients, vendors and partners. And, then, structure according to needs—easy access, open communication, privacy… you get the picture.

There are three basic cloud structures: Private, Public and Hybrid. They all have standard cloud perks—enhance efficiency, save money, increase collaboration, reduce hardware—but the degree to which each specific cloud does this, will vary.

Private

A private cloud is just that… private. You may think, “Medical. Private. No brainer.” But, it isn’t that cut and dry.

Yes, a private cloud is private but because of this, itrequires a high level of experience, involvement and, often times, capital.Private cloudsallow for the same basicactivities you’d find in any other cloud (application sharing, instant scalability) but access is restricted (less collaboration and communication).

Translation: High level of control, even higher level of security.

Many private clouds require their own dedicated IT department on-site (more expensive and more susceptible to data loss from natural disasters); however, in some cases, 3rd party organizations can host a private cloud off-premise (less expensive to manage).

Public

The public cloud is great for low-cost, low-maintenance computing.

Translation: Increased productivity, heightened efficiency.

However, a public cloud is hosted off-site at a 3rd party location. Because of this, you get what everyone else gets (less customization) and you’re considerably more susceptible to external attacks (less security).

Hybrid

With a hybrid cloud, you’ll receive the good and the bad of both a private cloud and a public cloud—it just won’t be as good or as bad.

Translation: Mostly private, semi-accessible.

In other words, you get security and communication but not to their full extent.

The major downside to hybrid computing is that you have to understand how to effectively manage multiple cloud structures and have the skill to ensure that they consistently communicate with each other.