This is an important question, especially for mid-size to big companies that are more interesting in building a private cloud than a small businesses that may opt for the public cloud. Besides private and public clouds, there are also community and hybrid cloud infrastructures. A company may build a private cloud to be used exclusively for its internal needs. It can be supervised by the company itself, another enterprise, or both. Its physical position may be where the company is located or in a remote data center.

A community cloud infrastructure aims to provide its services to a limited community of users who have a shared interest in their businesses. What about the public cloud? As the name says, the public cloud is thought to be used by the public. A third organization can operate it, and its location is situated where the cloud provider’s data center is. When merging two or more cloud infrastructures, you create a hybrid cloud, even though the different clouds keep distinct attributes. They are called hybrid because they share the proprietary tech that enables data and app portability.