Private cloud or public cloud? That is the question. Stef Roskam, VP of Engineering at Otherside at Work, takes you through our view. "Five years ago, we saw a strong movement towards the public cloud. We have always said that we will stick to the private cloud. It's a deliberate strategy, based on the specific needs of our customers and the nature of the data we process." In this blog, we take a closer look at why the private cloud is the right choice for Otherside at Work.
A private cloud is a completely isolated environment, where the cloud infrastructure is not shared with others. This offers an unprecedented level of control over where data resides and how access to it is regulated. Stef explains: "For example, we know exactly that customer X's data is in a specific data center in location Y, and that the backup is running in location Z. In addition, we know exactly who has access to the data and what data traffic is allowed." This detailed level of control is important for customers who have strict localization and security requirements for their data.
On the other hand, the public cloud provides an online shared infrastructure. Data and applications reside in an infrastructure of the cloud provider, and although this data can only be seen by its own organization, other companies use the same infrastructure. Stef emphasizes: "In the public cloud, you never get as granular a guarantee of the physical location of your data and access to it as you do in the private cloud."
In the public cloud, you never get as granular a guarantee of the physical location of your data and access to it as you do in the private cloud.
Otherside at Work serves a wide range of customers, including government agencies, banks, and insurance companies, who have very strict requirements for the security and localization of their data. "With Xpert Suite, we process sensitive health data from millions of medical records," explains Stef. "The value of medical data on the black market is enormous, which makes it crucial that we protect our customers' data properly. While it is technically possible to securely store this data in the public cloud, the private cloud offers more guarantees in terms of security and control."
Advantage 1: Security
Security is one of the main reasons Otherside at Work chooses private clouds. "Customers often ask us what components we use," Stef explains. "In the private cloud, we can easily show that and, for example, choose ourselves what hardware and infrastructure we use. In addition, physical servers are never shared with other customers, providing a level of control that is simply not possible in the public cloud."
Also, physical servers are never shared with other customers, providing a level of control that is simply not possible in the public cloud.
In addition, the risks of different tenants are significantly lower in the private cloud. Stef points to vulnerabilities that exist in the public cloud, such as the CosMiss and SynLapse incidents in Azure, where tenant separation was not adequately enforced.
Benefit 2: Compliancy
Compatibility is another key benefit of the private cloud. Stef emphasizes: "We have 100% certainty about where the data is. In the private cloud, we can guarantee that data is stored in the Netherlands if required, which is very important for many of our customers."
In the private cloud, we can guarantee that data is stored in the Netherlands if required.
In addition, the private cloud offers extensive control over the installation and allowed connections. "For example, we can strictly regulate what traffic is allowed, both incoming and outgoing. For example, consider a restriction on sending diagnostic data to America."
Benefit 3: Lifecycle management
In addition to security and compliance, the private cloud also offers better lifecycle management capabilities. Stef explains: "With a code base of more than 180 man-years, it is crucial for us to be able to manage the lifecycle management in a predictable way. Full cloud native development in the public cloud is very risky because you are dependent on the lifecycle decisions of major cloud providers, which can lead to major risks if some services stop working. It's relatively quick to rewrite a small codebase to another stack, but for us it's a very big operation. The vendor lock-in with the private cloud combined with our software stack is much smaller, and it gives us the ability to quickly switch and move to another private cloud provider if needed."
The vendor lock-in with the private cloud combined with our software stack is much less, and it gives us the ability to quickly switch and move to another private cloud provider if needed.
Neck 1: Scalability
A common misconception is that the private cloud would be less scalable than the public cloud. Stef sees it differently: "Our workload is quite stable and dynamic scalability is not a must for us, which is often the case with B2C companies. For some additional services, such as LLM, speech-to-text and translations, we use APIs from public cloud providers. However, we do this consciously and always on the basis of agreements with the customer."
Neck 2: Cost
Private clouds also offer advantages in terms of costs. "With private clouds it is clearer what the long-term costs are. The contracts we conclude are therefore long-term. This allows you to hedge against unexpected price increases. If you sign long-term contracts with public clouds, the price will also be cheaper, but the benefit of flexibility will be lost. This is precisely why organizations choose it. Often, short-term contracts with public clouds result in an unexpected (high) cost due to the many components that make up a price."
Neck 3: Uptime
Another supposed disadvantage is that the uptime of the private cloud would be worse. Stef qualifies this: "Our private cloud has an uptime of 99.9%, and we have the control and short lines to intervene quickly if needed. In the public cloud, we've seen global disruptions that knock out the entire infrastructure. For example, this year Microsoft suffered worldwide outages of Azure and Office cloud services. That risk is much lower with us, partly because we work with a less complex infrastructure."
Necessity 4: Automation
Finally, there is an assumption that automation in the private cloud lags behind the public cloud. Stef refutes this: "Even for private clouds, there are enough automation solutions available to keep the management burden in check."
Stef concludes
Stef concludes by looking to the future: "It's interesting to see that the trend is turning again. While five years ago almost everyone wanted to go to the public cloud, we are now seeing a shift among many companies. The management burden of private clouds is proving to be not as great as thought, and the drawbacks are less than often assumed. For our market segment, private cloud is still the best choice, as it gives us the control, security and predictability that we and our customers need."
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