As Cloud become more popular there all kind of flavors of Cloud coming about. Although variety is great but a lot of variety tends to add confusions. There still a lot of industry leaders still trying to figure out how Cloud would fit their needs. A lot of the popularity around Cloud has been in the small medium business space  but there are some enterprises that not yet made the jump due to security or the lack of clarity in that context.

Enterprises want the flexibility of Public Cloud but also want the security and control provided by the Public Cloud. How do companies get such flexibility? Yes I agree private cloud address those issues but elasticity is lacking and it does not change the age old behavior for IT to overbuy hardware for those “Just in case” situations. Only to find out that the additional hardware purchased could not accommodate the “just in case” scenario”.

There is a third kind of Cloud and it is called “Virtual Private Cloud” . Virtual Private Clouds have the elasticity of the public cloud but all the administrative and security control of a private cloud.  Even though some public cloud providers claim that their environment offers complete administrative control of the Application (load) in their environment in most case that is not the case. Virtual private Clouds allow for that flexibility and offer complete administrative control and has been customized to the need of the organization that wants to adopt the cloud.

The new “Hybrid” Environments .. In most cases hybrid environments allow organization to mix up both Public and in-house “Private” instance to establish cost effectiveness (for more information on Hybrid Cloud Environments ). Virtual Private Cloud add a new dimension and flexibility that an organization might have not explored. I have captured some of the basic differences between the 3 variants that I highlight in the blog.  Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.