What is public cloud?

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Public cloud is today’s most popular and commonly used variant of cloud computing. A public cloud is accessible to everyone and users of a public cloud are sharing the underlying (physical) hardware.

A public cloud provider is responsible for the speed and stability of the infrastructure. This means that you, as a customer, don’t have to worry about the maintenance and updates of the underlying infrastructure. This way, you can fully focus on your virtual platform without having to worry about the hardware used.

Why choose public cloud

As mentioned before, it’s not your responsibility to take care of the underlying infrastructure. In addition, Public cloud brings even more advantages. Launching a virtual machine (VM) can be done in just a few clicks. You can configure a VM yourself so it meets the exact specifications you need (for example, you can run the OS of your choice on your VM). Once online, you only pay for the resources you actually use (accurate to the minute). Public cloud is the ideal solution for organizations with fluctuating demand. In case you need more resources, scaling up can be done very easy and vice versa.

Private vs. public cloud: What’s the difference?

Beside public cloud, you have probably heard of private cloud. By using a private cloud, organizations have full control over the hardware that is used for your cloud environment. A private cloud is delivered to one, and only one, organization. This way the infrastructure is not shared with other organizations. Large organizations who need a high level of control in addition to their infrastructure often choose a private cloud solution.

The maintenance and management of a private cloud is complex and requires a high level of expertise. For this reason organizations often choose a Managed Service Provider (MSP) to help them make the right choices during the process of setting up the cloud and eventually managing their cloud.

Public cloud and OpenStack

Back to the public cloud. If you choose a public cloud provider for your hosting needs, it’s comforting to be able to easily migrate to another provider in case you are dissatisfied. Migrating from one public cloud provider to another becomes easy when they’re using open source technology. Public clouds such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are built on their own proprietary technology. This makes it difficult for a user to switch from cloud A to cloud B in the future. Fortunately, more and more ‘open’ clouds are being launched, making it easier for organizations to move to the public cloud.

A common technology used by open source minded cloud providers is OpenStack; an open source cloud operating system backed by hundreds of organizations and thousands of contributors. Fuga Cloud is one of these public cloud providers that embraces OpenStack and uses this technology as its basis. This gives our users a sense of freedom. If desired, users of our cloud platform can easily migrate to another public cloud that uses OpenStack technology.

Comparing Public Cloud providers

Now that you know more about the importance of open source in making your choice for a public cloud provider, you’re probably wondering how Fuga Cloud compares between public cloud providers like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. With a simple case, we give you an overview of several public cloud providers you can choose from today. In this example, software developer We Make IT Work is looking for a public cloud solution for hosting their customers’ applications. For a start, a virtual server with 2 cores, 2048 MB RAM and 40 GB SSD disk space will suffice. In the example below, four virtual machines from 4 public cloud providers are compared. For the specs, we tried to stay as close to the desired configuration as possible.

  • AWS t2.medium

    • Open source No
    • CPU 2 cores
    • RAM memory 4295 MB
    • Diskspace 40 GB SSD
    • Monthly costs € 32,13
    • IOPS activities pay per use

  • Azure D1 v2

    • Open source No
    • CPU 2 cores
    • RAM memory 3758 MB
    • Diskspace 54 GB SSD
    • Monthly costs € 34,08
    • IOPS activities pay per use

  • Google Cloud n1-highcpu-2

    • Open source No
    • CPU 2 cores
    • RAM memory 1300 MB
    • Diskspace None
      configured separately
    • Monthly costs € 29,68
    • IOPS activities for free

  • Fuga c1.small

    • Open source Yes OpenStack
    • CPU 2 cores
    • RAM memory 2048 MB
    • Diskspace 40 GB SSD
    • Monthly costs € 20,00
    • IOPS activities for free
Monthly costs are based on a period of 4 weeks / 720 hours. Latest update of this calculation is April 25, 2018. For this calculation, the AWS pricing calculator, Azure pricing calculator, Google Cloud pricing calculator and the Fuga Cloud pricing calculator have been used.

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3 reasons for choosing Fuga Cloud

1. Hosted in The Netherlands

Unlike AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, Fuga Cloud is 100% Dutch. We use Dutch data centers and your data is protected by Dutch and European privacy laws. Fuga Cloud customers aren’t affected by the Safe Harbor agreement or the new EU-US Privacy Shield, which hasn’t been ratified yet.

With Fuga Cloud, you comply with Dutch and European legislation and privacy policies on the protection of your own and your customers’ data.

2. No vendor lock-in

AWS, Azure and Google Cloud are based on a self-built platform. Fuga Cloud is based on OpenStack, which is open source software. This allows you to easily migrate your data and applications to other OpenStack cloud providers, should you want to do so.

Choosing an open source solution prevents you from getting locked-in by the cloud platform you use, which is the case with Azure, AWS and Google Cloud. By using Fuga Cloud, you choose flexibility and freedom.

3. No additional costs

With Fuga Cloud, you can select the most suitable configuration for your needs and immediately know what it will cost. With AWS and Azure you pay for every IOPS (read and write) transaction; Fuga Cloud doesn’t charge for these unpredictable variables.

The only thing you have to pay for, apart from your configuration, is traffic.