What is Public cloud provider?

A public cloud service provider is a third party that offers resources such as virtual machines, applications, or storage over the public internet. They can be used by anyone for free or on-demand, allowing users to pay as per their usage and requirements.

Compared to private clouds, public clouds can reduce the hassle of managing and maintaining on-premises hardware and application infrastructure and also cut costs. The public cloud service provider is held responsible for managing and maintaining the cloud infrastructure.

The key public cloud providers include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Oracle Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud.

Advantages of using a public cloud provider:

• No hassle of maintaining your own on-premises IT infrastructure
• Pay for only what you use—no wasted resources
• Easier scalability to meet workload and user demands
• Easier storage of high volumes of data

Disadvantages of using a public cloud provider:

• Organizations have limited control over their IT infrastructure when using a public cloud.
• Although a public cloud is cheaper than on-premises, organizations end up spending more due to complex pricing models and increasing cloud costs.
• It is difficult for organizations to find skilled IT personnel to maintain and manage modern cloud applications.

Monitoring a public cloud

Cloud monitoring tools can help organizations address the above public cloud challenges and optimize their cloud resources and costs. Site24x7 provides monitoring support for AWS, Azure, and GCP from one console.