What is a Public Cloud?

Public cloud is managed by third-party providers who host computing services and infrastructure. The vendors manage software, hardware, and other types of supporting infrastructure which are distributed across multiple users or organizations. Public cloud hosting gives users a choice to acquire resources on-demand and scale up without having to own any physical hardware.  

Features of Public Cloud:

1. Multi-Tenancy - Resources shared among several users or tenants, but maintaining the confidentiality and integrity of data using logical isolation.

2. Elasticity and Scalability - Users can scale resources up or down, like storage and processing power - as needed without being billed for unused resources.

3. Pay-as-you-go pricing model - Public clouds employ the consumption-based price model. This removes high expenditure and causes overall costs to decrease corresponding to usage.

4. Accessibility - With access anywhere around the globe, services allow collaboration, and even remote access to data and apps.  

5. Managed Infrastructure - The cloud provider looks after all the maintenance and updates performed and ensures security of the infrastructure.  

Public Cloud Platform (AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle) Elements:  

  • VMs and containers  
  • Relational and NoSQL databases
  • Real-time analytics  
  • Developer tools  
  • Firewalls
  • Load balancers  
  • Platform-as-a-Service, Software-as-a-Service, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service