Public Cloud
What Is a Public Cloud in IT Services?
A public cloud is a cloud computing model where IT resources—such as servers, storage, databases, and applications—are delivered over the internet by third-party providers. These resources are hosted in the provider’s data centers and shared among multiple customers, but each customer’s data remains isolated and secure.
Public cloud is known for:
- Scalability
- Cost efficiency
- Global accessibility
- Pay-as-you-go consumption
Key Service Models in the Public Cloud
- IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
IaaS provides virtualized computing resources over the internet.
You get access to:
- Virtual machines (VMs)
- Storage
- Networks
- Load balancers
- Firewalls
You manage: OS, applications, data
Provider manages: Physical servers, networking, virtualization layer
Examples: AWS EC2, Azure Virtual Machines, Google Compute Engine
- PaaS (Platform as a Service)
PaaS offers a complete development and deployment platform in the cloud.
You get:
- Runtime environments
- Databases
- Middleware
- Development tools
- Managed hosting
You manage: Applications and data
Provider manages: Infrastructure + runtime environment
Examples: Azure App Service, Google App Engine, AWS Elastic Beanstalk
- XaaS (Anything as a Service)
XaaS is a broad term for delivering any IT function or service over the internet.
It includes:
- SaaS (Software as a Service)
- DaaS (Desktop as a Service)
- BaaS (Backup as a Service)
- FaaS (Function as a Service)
- Security as a Service, etc.
Essentially, if it can be delivered online, it falls under XaaS.
Benefits of Public Cloud
- No upfront hardware costs
- High scalability and flexibility
- Fast deployment
- Global availability
- Automatic updates and maintenance
- Wide range of services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, XaaS)
Common Public Cloud Providers
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Microsoft Azure
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- IBM Cloud
- Oracle Cloud