One of the most popular cloud computing model used by a lot of consumers across the globe is the public cloud model. Contrary to the private cloud model, where the infrastructure and services are ran through and maintained on a private network that is only made accessible to the client of that particular network, a public cloud computing model relies on shared resources that can be accessed over a public network. This means that a public cloud can be accessed by multiple consumers all at once, using the same infrastructure that is shared among them.
Public cloud computing model can generally be broken down into two different models. One of the models, which is also what is most familiar to the regular consumers, is what is known as the Software as a Service model, which is often abbreviated as SaaS. The SaaS model of cloud computing includes cloud storage as well as online office applications, which are two of the most commonly used cloud services by the general public. Aside from Software as a Service, the public cloud computing models also include Platform as a Service, which is also known as PaaS. True to its name and as opposed to the Software as a Service model, PaaS includes web-hosting based on the cloud, as well as development environments. No matter what type of service you end up choosing, however, a public cloud computing model comes with many benefits, which include:
- Economic value. It is no surprise that the popularity of the public cloud can be attributed to the fact that is is one of the most cost-effective and economic option out there for anyone looking for a solid computing service and infrastructure. The elimination of the need to acquire and maintain your own servers and infrastructure in favor of using shared resources means that cost can be reduced significantly. Some public cloud computing services are even offered for free, albeit with limited capacity and features.
- The public cloud computing market is saturated by so many different choices and options for you to choose, each with their own different services and packages offered. This means that you can be incredibly flexible in your choices, choosing the services and model that suits your needs and requirements best and being able to modify them in the future shall the need arise without much hassle.
- Most computing models out there suffer from a lack of reliability. The failure of a component in a traditional computing model has the potential to bring down the entire system all at once, but this is less of a concern when it comes to a public cloud computing model that relies on multiple servers and networks all at once, meaning that even if one of its components is down or experiencing failure the services offered by the public cloud itself can be largely unaffected. This also makes a public cloud computing model less vulnerable to failures, as there is no single point of failure.
