The Real Cloud Decision: Who Owns Performance, Security, & Cost?

Elasticity is Easy to Buy. Predictability, Security, & Accountability Are Not.

It’s time we rethink the cloud conversation. Most organizations prioritize convenience and elasticity when choosing their cloud environment. Both of these factors are important, but they’re not the only factors that matter. The real differences between cloud models show up over time, when performance, security, and cost become an issue. All modern cloud environments are elastic to varying degrees. The differentiator is who owns the work required to make that elasticity reliable, secure, and cost-effective.

To get the full picture, we seek to compare the different options that are out there — self-hosting, public cloud environments, and privately managed cloud environments.

What Does Self-Hosting Actually Require?

The choice between private cloud infrastructure and self-hosting is less about technology and more about risk, cost-predictability, staffing, and operational focus.

High availability

Redundant connectivity

Ransomware-protected and isolated backups

Clustered systems

Continuous monitoring

Security

Patching

Seamless updates

These features are not easy to maintain nor are they cost-effective when you self-host. In traditional on-premise environments, each of these capabilities is added piecemeal — driving up cost, complexity, and risk.

When organizations account for the full reality of on-prem infrastructure, costs escalate quickly and unpredictably. Hosting an environment requires:

• Hardware
• Licenses
• Backup and security platforms
• High-availability architecture

Along with 24/7 staff to deploy, monitor, and manage it all.

The operating costs of a private cloud environment, such as Protected Cloud, are more predictable and don’t require upfront hardware purchases. Self-hosting, however, requires significant capital investment and recurring refresh cycles every 3-5 years. Not to mention unexpected costs related to power, cooling, maintenance, downtime, emergency replacements, and more. Sure, having total ownership seems great, but that means you have to deal with the total cost of ownership. Self-hosting also requires internal engineers and on-call coverage, meaning it comes with staffing and operational burdens that introduce key-person dependency risk.

Another thing to consider is the worst-case scenario. Certain private clouds have redundancy and disaster recovery built in, but in self-hosted environments, these features must be separately designed, funded, and maintained. Self-hosted environments also rely heavily on internal discipline and additional tooling to meet security and compliance requirements.

Not to mention the difficulties you’ll face as your companies tries to grow. Self-hosting requires purchasing and installing new hardware, often leading to capacity planning challenges that make it difficult to scale without procurement delays.

The bottom-line — self-hosting gives you complete control — but it also places the full responsibility of your environment on your shoulders alone.

Public Cloud: Tradeoffs Over Time

Public cloud environments place the burden of architecture, monitoring, and incident response on you as the customer. When incidents occur, this often requires coordination across multiple vendors while outages persist.

On top of managing complex architectures and coordinating multiple vendors, organizations also have to deal with financial uncertainty. Public cloud environments are good for elasticity and scale, but this comes at a cost. Public cloud providers offer tools that make it easy to add or subtract servers and systems, along with distributing them geographically. However, the cost of these tools is often unpredictable. Public cloud users are often charged for every bit of network traffic, disk traffic, storage usage — even private network communication between two servers.

Public cloud costs are ever growing without cost details, so organizations don’t fully understand what they’re paying for. Public cloud environments also introduce hundreds of services, pricing variables, and dependencies that increase cost uncertainty and operational complexity over time.

A major distinguisher between public cloud environments and private cloud environments is the infrastructure itself. Most cloud deployments are an empty VM. The dashboard like nature encourages quickly spinning up resources or environments without the thought of how they all fit together. This can lead to insecure or illogical designs and wasted resources. Public cloud deployments charge you both for the resources you allocate AND the traffic moving inside your deployment between VMs. This means over allocation of resources, inefficient or busy code, and unused cloud resources all result in higher costs

However, private cloud environments like Protected Cloud provide dedicated resources sized specifically for your workloads. This ensures consistent performance without noisy-neighbor risk. Public cloud environments rely on shared infrastructure where performance can fluctuate and optimization becomes an ongoing effort.

Providing consistent, reliable performance is key for any organization. This ensures staff can get work done, customers remain happy, your reputation isn’t impacted, and profits can continue to grow. Because public clouds rely on shared infrastructure, performance can vary as workloads change and scale, requiring ongoing tuning and active management to maintain consistency over time — which are your responsibility.

When problems do occur, you have to submit a ticket to your cloud vendor and wait for a response. Sometimes you’ll be directed to a status page with updates about ongoing issues, but often you’re stuck waiting and have to hope that whatever response you get is helpful.

Another issue that arises with public cloud environments is misalignment with security and compliance. Protected Cloud is a private cloud environment built with a compliance-first design, while public cloud security follows a shared-responsibility model. This often leads to confusion, misconfiguration, and additional consulting costs.

The bottom-line — public cloud environments are great for elasticity and scalability — but private cloud environments are the better long-term solution for stability, cost predictability, and security.

The Protected Cloud Difference

Protected Cloud offered by Protected Harbor is a privately managed cloud environment. Protected Cloud brings together deep infrastructure and hosting expertise with DevOps and programming support to deliver a secure, flexible, and well-governed platform.

It’s designed for organizations that need:

• Predictable costs
• Strong security
• Hands-on operational support

Protected Cloud is purpose-built for steady workloads, compliance-driven environments, and long-term operational stability.

With Protected Cloud, infrastructure, platform, and operations are actively monitored and managed 24/7 by a single accountable partner whose job is to prevent outages before they can impact your business. Stuck updates, runaway jobs, and resource contention are identified and addressed in minutes by experienced engineers, restoring systems quickly and avoiding prolonged downtime and reputational damage.

Infrastructure, operations, and support are all under one reliable partner offering fixed, transparent pricing — eliminating unpredictable usage spikes and cost uncertainty.

Protected Cloud offers:

• Clear monthly costs
• Dedicated resources tailored to your organization’s specific workflow
• Clear accountability for security control and simpler audit processes
• Reduced architectural complexity, making onboarding and long-term management easier

Self-hosting maximizes control but it also maximizes responsibility. Protected Cloud delivers private infrastructure benefits without the staffing risk, capital exposure, and operational complexity of self-hosting.

Public cloud and private cloud environments are both elastic. Protected Cloud differentiates itself through predictable cost, dedicated resources, and clear accountability. Protected Cloud is the better platform for organizations prioritizing long-term stability, security, and a true managed partnership.

At Protected Harbor, we care deeply about the success of our clients and fostering strategic partnerships. We offer private infrastructure without the private infrastructure burden, along with the skillset and flexibility to scale an environment, all at an upfront cost.

Framework: How Does Cloud Hosting Impact You?

Self-hosting and public clouds both have their own unique benefits — along with their downfalls. Protected Cloud exists as a middle path, providing your organization with the control and privacy of private cloud environments, along with the elasticity common to public clouds, but without the cost uncertainty or the burden of full responsibility weighing on your shoulders.

Consider:

• What type of cloud environment does your organization currently use?
• Is this cloud environment meeting your needs?
• Do you feel that what you’re getting is worth what you’re paying for?
• Are costs predictable?

Is the Cloud Answer to Everything?

The cloud is a popular topic, with big and small organizations looking at cloud solutions to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and accelerate new projects. A recent survey found that 66% of businesses currently use the cloud in some capacity. But is it the answer to everything? Is the cloud the best option for your business? The quick answer is No! – but there’s more to it than that. Read on to find out if the cloud is right for you and your business or if another solution might suit you better.

We are excited to bring you another much-requested video on our series Uptime with Richard Luna. We are discussing Cloud and Is the Cloud answer all your problems. Watch the video to understand it in detail.

Why the Cloud is Such a Big Deal

If you think back to when you were a child, the internet probably wouldn’t have even been on your radar. It’s only been around for a few decades, so it’s not surprising that it’s still such a new concept, even though it’s become a massive part of our daily lives.

When you hear the word cloud, what do you think? Most people think of a massive server that holds all the data for an organization, storing it in a remote location. This is an oversimplification, but it gets the point across. As a business owner, you need to know what the cloud means and what it could mean for your organization.

For a good reason, the cloud has become a massive trend in recent years. It offers various benefits that traditional on-premises solutions cannot match. Hybrid cloud solutions, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) are just some examples of cloud offerings available to businesses. One of the significant advantages of cloud computing is the flexibility it provides. Businesses can choose between public and private clouds or even create multi-cloud environments that utilize multiple clouds to meet their specific needs.

Cloud solutions like IBM Cloud, and Protected Harbor Cloud can simplify management and reduce overhead costs, as businesses no longer have to worry about maintaining and upgrading their hardware or operating systems. Moreover, businesses can quickly scale up or down their resources as required with the cloud, making it a more cost-effective solution. These and other benefits of cloud computing have made it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes and industries.

Is the Cloud Right for You?

Whether or not the cloud is right for you depends on your business, needs, and how it aligns with your goals and vision for the future. If you’re unsure if the cloud is the right solution, consider the following questions: Is your organization ready for a significant change or transformation? Do you have a reliable and secure internet connection? Does your organization have a substantial amount of data? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, the cloud might be your ideal solution.

Cloud computing services are viable options for businesses looking to modernize their IT infrastructure. However, choosing the right cloud solution depends on various factors, such as the business’s size, industry, and requirements. For instance, small business owners might benefit more from SaaS offerings that allow them to access the software through the cloud rather than investing in costly hardware and maintenance.

On the other hand, larger companies with complex IT infrastructure might find IaaS or PaaS more suitable, as they offer greater control and customization over the environment. Additionally, businesses with a hybrid cloud architecture, combining on-premises and cloud infrastructure, may require a hybrid cloud infrastructure to ensure seamless integration between the two.

Furthermore, choosing a cloud provider is also critical, and businesses must select a reliable provider such as Alibaba Cloud that offers high availability and scalability. Virtual machines and other computing services provided by the cloud can also be advantageous, allowing businesses to quickly spin up new resources or scale up existing ones to meet their demands. Ultimately, the decision of whether the cloud is right for you depends on your unique business needs and goals.

What Else Should You Be Considering?

While the cloud may be a good fit for your business, there are a few other things you may want to consider before making a decision. What are your security needs? If you’re storing data remotely, you must be confident that it’s secure. Being compliant with government regulations like HIPAA and GDPR is another critical factor. Finally, you’ll also want to consider your budget and ROI. If you don’t have the budget to use a cloud-based solution, you might want to look at other options.

Summary

The cloud is a popular solution for many businesses but isn’t the best solution for everyone. No single technology or vendor can be the answer to everything. Cloud providers are trying to solve different problems at different scales. As with any technology, the cloud has its strengths and weaknesses, and it’s essential to understand them before making decisions.

There are many Cloud service providers in the US. Among all, Protected Harbor was one of the top Cloud service providers in the US. Our cloud services include AWS Migration, Office 365 Migration, Google Cloud Migration, Hybrid Cloud, Private Cloud, and Dedicated Cloud Infrastructure.

If you’re still unsure about the Cloud or its features, contact one of our experts immediately. They’ll recommend the best-suited strategy for your business. We are also giving away a free IT Audit to help the company identify its weak points. Keep watching the video for more.

Understanding the Risks of Cloud Migration and Security Measures to Mitigate Them

Thanks to our experts at Protected Harbor, we’ve released a new infographic that can help your organization or business to reduce your cloud migration security risks. This cloud migration risk assessment checklist = includes key security tips and advice to help you make the right cloud migration decisions. Download it now to learn more! And don’t forget to visit our blog for more tips and advice.

As your organization evaluates cloud migration, it’s critical to understand the security challenges in cloud computing. Security is a top concern for many businesses, so before you move your company’s data and services to the cloud, you must understand how to mitigate any potential risk. Understanding data protection during cloud migration is essential for an effective migration strategy. The first step in this process is understanding the potential risks of migrating your organization to the cloud.

After all, not every business can trust third parties with its data. But with the proper security measures in place, moving to a cloud platform can benefit almost any business.

Download our infographic to understand how to reduce cloud migration security risks in a quick overview, and continue reading the blog for more information.

What Is Cloud Migration?

Cloud migration is the process of moving an organization’s data, applications, and other business elements from on-premises data centers to cloud computing services. Several types of cloud computing are available, including public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud, each with its own benefits and challenges. Cloud migration requires careful planning and execution to ensure that sensitive information remains secure and protected from data breaches.

Moving apps, data, and other digital assets from an on-premises data center to the cloud is also cloud migration. These may be programs that have been specially created for the organizations or ones that they have licensed from a different vendor. There are various methods for moving to the cloud, including:

• “Lift and shift” refer to moving apps as-is.
• Modifying applications slightly to facilitate their cloud migration
• Application rebuilding or remodeling to make them more suitable for a cloud environment
• Changing from legacy applications that don’t support the cloud to new ones that cloud vendors offer.
• “Cloud-native development” refers to the process of creating new cloud-based apps.

What is CSPM?

What are the Key Benefits of Cloud Migration?

The advantages of the cloud, which include hosting applications and data in a highly effective IT environment that can increase factors like cost, performance, and security, are the overarching goal of most cloud migrations.

Elastic scalability, a need to reduce costs or convert from a capital expenditure to an operating expenses model, and a requirement for new technologies, services, or features only available in a cloud environment are essential drivers for cloud migration.

The flexibility of corporate IT teams to deliver new services and expand the company to meet changing business requirements is enhanced by cloud computing, which is maybe even more significant.

Security Risks of Cloud Migration

Because cloud migration is susceptible to several attacks, careful planning is required. Sensitive data is exchanged during migration, leaving it open to attack. Additionally, attackers may obtain access to unsecured development, test, or production environments at different points in a migration project.

Plan your cloud migration efforts in advance of the following dangers:

Application Programming Interface (API) vulnerabilities: APIs serve as communication routes between environments. At every step of the cloud migration process, APIs must be protected.

Blind spots: Using the cloud requires giving up some operational control. Before migrating, check the security your cloud provider offers and how to enhance it with supplemental third-party security solutions.

Compliance requirements: Verify that your intended cloud environment complies with the necessary standards. This comprises the organization’s protocols for ensuring the security of cloud workloads, data, and access, as well as compliance certifications issued by the cloud provider. As part of the standards for compliance, all of these may be audited and will be.

Unchecked Growth: Moving to the cloud is a continuous process. The company will probably add more resources, use new cloud services, and add more apps after moving applications to the cloud. Once SaaS apps are up and operating in the cloud, it is normal to begin employing more SaaS applications. A significant operational problem exists in securing these new services and applications effectively.

Data loss: Moving to the cloud requires the transfer of data. If there are issues with the migration process, it is crucial to ensure that data is backed up. With rigorous key management, all data is transferred across encrypted channels.

5 Ways to Mitigate Cloud Migration Security Risks

Here are a few cloud security best practices that can help improve security during and after cloud migrations:

1. Develop a Plan– Planning before migration and executing successfully is essential. Use automated tools and optimization to outline the expertise, resources, and tooling you need to start.
2. Start Small- To reduce the fear and accelerate cloud adoption, start with an automatic workload lift and shift over in small portions.
3. Leverage SaaS Adoption– Utilize your business units to promote cloud adoption by investing in Software-as-a-Service.
4. Set Security Standards– Develop baseline security standards by collaborating with your governance team.
5. Use Managed Services- Organizations should monitor their cloud security posture from the control plan to asset configuration. They can partner with a Managed Services Provider for efficient migration.

Conclusion

Migrating to the cloud can be a great way to boost your company’s productivity and scalability. But it’s essential to understand the security risks first. The best way to mitigate these risks is to work with a reputable cloud provider committed to data security.

Having the right security practices in place for your team is also important. With the proper security measures, you can enjoy all the benefits of migrating to the cloud. That’s why we have created an infographic to help you out. Download today and get started with your cloud migration.