An increasing number of organizations are turning to the public cloud to save money, gain flexibility … and so much more.

Moving IT services to the cloud is a major goal of many organizations today, as it has numerous benefits. From consolidating IT functions, to lower cost, higher security and ease of solving IT issues, there are many reasons why an increasing number of organizations are turning to the cloud as their preferred data storage and computing services.

What Is a Public Cloud?

The most common cloud computing type today is a public cloud. In a public cloud, the resources such as storage space and servers are owned by a third-party provider, and delivered entirely via the internet. In this setup, all of the software, hardware and supporting infrastructure that’s necessary are the responsibility of the provider of the cloud services.

Some of the most widely used services are Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

Public clouds provide many benefits to organizations of all shapes and sizes, thanks to the fact that all users share the same network, storage and hardware devices as other users on that cloud. This provides plenty of efficiency for the cloud provider itself, which is able to pass on that efficiency — and resulting benefits — to the users.

Below are six of the biggest benefits of using a public cloud.

1. Cost Efficiency

Budget is a major concern for all companies, and IT is often an area where significant savings can be realized by using a public cloud.

Along with using Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to help supplement in-house IT services, the public cloud is one of the most common ways that organizations can gain cost efficiency in IT services.

Here’s how.

Low Capital Expenditure

When you use a public cloud, there’s no need to purchase the expensive software and hardware that runs your core processes. Instead, the cloud provider takes on the onus of these costs and simply provides the service to its users.

This means that there are low capital expenditures associated with running services on the public cloud, since there’s next to no infrastructure that you have to purchase aside from the computers and internet service through which you’ll connect to the cloud.

With no equipment necessary, your organization will also realize savings by eliminating maintenance costs from future budgets.

Pay-as-You-Go Pricing

Many public clouds provide pay-as-you-go pricing. In other words, you are able to select the specific services you want, only pay for the services you need and use, and pay a per-month price, if you so choose.

This pricing structure means you can easily avoid overpaying for services you don’t need and/or rarely use. Plus, you can more easily budget for these services as an ongoing monthly expense, rather than needing to shell out a significant upfront investment.

Economies of Scale

With a public cloud, you can easily scale services up or down depending on the needs that you have.

If you find that your company is expanding, you can simply add on new services with a few clicks. Conversely, if you find you don’t need certain services, it only takes a click or two to remove them.

Most public clouds also allow you to make these changes on a month-to-month basis, often without locking you into a long-term contract. This is much different than a private cloud, which would require you to set up and pay for the entire cloud on your own, since the service is dedicated just to your organization.

2. Scalability and Flexibility

Public clouds were created as a way to provide immense scalability and flexibility to the entities that use them. These economies of scale establish major benefits to public clouds, as detailed below.

On-Demand Resources

The most popular public cloud providers offer an easy-to-understand “menu” of services that they offer. All an organization needs to do is browse through them, pick the ones they need and add them to their package.

Beyond this, public clouds provide on-demand resources that you can activate when needed. For instance, if you launch a new product that causes a huge spike in traffic to your website, you can easily upscale the resources to meet that new demand.

Even better, you don’t need to keep the resources at this elevated level if it’s not necessary long-term. Simply scale back down when things return to “normal.”

Auto-Scaling Capabilities

Public clouds often allow you to set in parameters for each service that will automatically scale up or down capabilities based on usage. So, for the above scenario, you might not even have to take any manual action to ensure you have sufficient services.

Global Reach and Availability

No matter where you are in the world, you can access public clouds quickly and easily. This has taken on new importance with the prevalence of remote work, and the likely fact that it isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

You and your team need to have consistent and speedy access to services at all times, from all places, and public clouds provide that to you.

3. Performance Optimization

Services are only as good as they perform. It’s vital that essential services are always available and respond quickly. This is an area where public clouds shine.

High Availability

Because the leading public cloud providers are some of the largest IT services companies in the world — Google, Amazon and Microsoft, to name a few — they provide high availability.

Providers as large as these have created IT environments that ensure services hardly, if ever, have downtime— and when they do, it’s for short periods of time without data loss. This high availability is one major advantage that a public cloud has over a private cloud and in-house network, based simply on the power of the organizations behind them.

Enhanced Speed and Responsiveness

With a public cloud, you’re ensuring that you will be able to connect to your services when you need them. Not only that, but the speed at which you can do so, and the responsiveness that it provides, will be second-to-none.

This is especially important when you have multiple people trying to connect to the cloud and use the same services at the same time.

Load Balancing

Public clouds allow for network traffic to be distributed equally across a pool of resources. For instance, instead of relying on one server to carry the entire load, public clouds have multiple servers spread across various data centers to ensure that the load is evenly balanced.

Load balancing means there are rarely concerns regarding downtime and latency, even if a sudden event causes an outage in one location. This is also why the public cloud is an integral part of many IT disaster recovery plans.

4. Security and Compliance

Security and compliance are two hot-button issues today. With cyberthreats increasing in number and degree of seriousness, it’s all the more important to ensure that your data and services are well protected at all times.

With a public cloud, you’ll know that you have the best security available.

Advanced Security Features

A major challenge of cybersecurity threats is that they are infinite. In other words, organizations have to not only constantly monitor known potential threats, but also learn of new threats and create guardrails to protect against them.

For many organizations, this can be a monumental undertaking. Even if you partner with an experienced cybersecurity firm, putting sufficient cybersecurity measures in place may be too much of an investment for some companies.

This is less of a concern with a public cloud, as the service provider is constantly innovating in cybersecurity and testing to ensure their advanced security features are working properly.

Compliance Certifications and Standards

Many companies must abide by industry-specific certifications and standards when it comes to the management and storage of data. Keeping compliant with all applicable rules and regulations is an essential part of doing business in these industries.

If a public cloud lists a certain certification, end users can offboard internal compliance efforts to the cloud provider with the assurance compliance is maintained..

Regular Security Updates

Creating and implementing a plan for security updates can be a job unto itself when you manage your data and services in-house. With a public cloud, you are passing that responsibility off to the service provider.

These providers regularly update their systems and servers to meet security needs in the back-end, and users don’t notice any changes in the front-end. All of this happens in real-time and without any hands-on work needed from users.

Cost Optimization

Increasingly, companies are opting for a hybrid cloud strategy, which involves using the public cloud for some less mission-critical services while keeping other core services in-house.

This provides great cost savings for the tasks and services you do migrate to the cloud, while allowing your company to retain control of the services and data that matter most.

5. Disaster Recovery

Any organization should have a disaster recovery plan in place so they can respond if an unexpected event ever causes a major outage or disruption in service. Some organizations simply don’t have the time, money and resources to do this on their own, though, which is why they might turn to a public cloud.

Here are some ways the public cloud can help in this regard.

Server Redundancy

Public cloud service providers run multiple servers from multiple locations across the world. This allows them to quickly switch from one server to another in the blink of an eye if an outage, attack or other disruption occurs.

This server redundancy ensures uptime, allows for automated backups and, in the worst-case scenario, faster recovery times.

Geographic Redundancy

Public cloud providers typically position their servers in different parts of the world. This geographic redundancy allows them to preemptively put plans in place in case of a disaster that affects only one part of the world.

For instance, if weather causes major damage at one server location, the service provider can simply switch to another server location that isn’t experiencing a weather-related disaster.

6. Innovation and Agility

The leading public cloud service providers are on the leading edge of innovation and agility, which offers many benefits to the user.

Access to Latest Technologies

All users of a public cloud gain access to the latest technological innovations developed by the cloud provider, which regularly update their offerings. The financial and time cost to ensure this level of innovation isn’t something that would be feasible to most organizations if they ran all IT services in-house.

Rapid Deployment Capabilities

Setting up new public cloud access is straightforward, uncomplicated and doesn’t take a lot of time. In many cases, public cloud providers offer easy-to-follow instructions and guides on how to do so, and provide one-on-one support should you have any questions.

This allows your organization to not only quickly establish a public cloud account, but start using it quickly, too.

Experimentation and Development Platforms

The public cloud is an ideal place for companies to develop and test new applications. Since apps can be easily created and deployed to the masses via the public cloud, organizations don’t have to worry about a distribution plan — whether during the testing or implementation phases.

In many ways, this enables organizations to achieve further cost efficiencies while being more effective as well.

Support Your Public Cloud Efforts with Techmate’s Help

There are many reasons why an increasing number of organizations today are moving services and storage to the public cloud. From gaining cost efficiency, to enabling scalability and flexibility, to optimizing performance and so much more, the public cloud has endless benefits.

While the public cloud is an ideal fit for many IT functions, there could be that other IT tasks are best left in-house. But, if your organization doesn’t have the capability to handle it with in-house staff, a great option is to outsource IT services to Techmate.

If you need additional bandwidth to take on large projects, or are simply unable to effectively provide rapid on-site IT support across satellite offices without dedicated IT resources, consider how Techmate can increase your team’s capacity.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between public cloud vs. private cloud?

The public cloud is a network that’s shared by multiple users, while the private cloud is relegated to only one user. This sharing of resources often makes the public cloud easier to adopt, while also being much more affordable for many organizations.

How does public cloud computing work?

Public cloud service providers offer servers to multiple users at the same time, providing cost efficiency by sharing resources.

What is the difference between public cloud vs. hybrid cloud?

A hybrid cloud is a combination of using the public cloud for some services while keeping others in-house. This can provide cost savings while also allowing the organization to retain control of what’s most important to it.