Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Private vs Public Cloud)

[Jill Wells (JMW)]

William Shakespeare (1564 –1616) was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.¹

Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet 18 - also known as “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” - is one of the best-known of his 154 sonnets, and recently came to mind when talking with a colleague about the differences between private hosted and public cloud services. My literary skills don’t stretch to putting these thoughts into rhyme, but there are some important comparisons between the two types of service that I’d like to share with you.

Security

Security is top of mind for all of us these days. A private cloud solution from Polycom is completely dedicated to you and not shared with other subscribers, which ensures any and all data stays within your domain and under your direct control at all times.

By comparison, public/shared cloud services, particularly multi-tenant solutions, provide no direct control – as once your data leaves the network it’s under the control of a third party. If you have compliance or regulatory requirements to adhere to, then a public cloud provides far less transparency to you. Even for information as sensitive as patient data, compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is no guarantee that data could not be compromised in a cloud environment that is publicly accessible to hackers and outside intrusion.

Flexibility

Just like having your own on-premises infrastructure, a private hosted solution is completely customizable to your workflows (scheduling, dial plan, dial in VMR or dial out high touch) and integrations (i.e. Lotus, Microsoft, API to front office and back office systems), giving you maximum flexibility as your requirements change.  It also provides you with the opportunity to personalize the solution.

A shared public cloud has very limited flexibility, as the service needs to work across multiple verticals, use cases and requirements. This can be very restrictive in an ever-changing environment where work habits are continuously evolving. It becomes impossible to personalize as it needs to provide a solution to multiple organizations. With Polycom’s solution you can easily adapt to any possible change in business or technical requirements, and uniquely personalize it to complement your existing applications and workflows – giving your organization investment protection and a futureproof, tailored solution.

Quality of Service

Having a Polycom private cloud solution on your network allows you to use your dedicated network connectivity with Quality of Service for all on-network connections, and so provide a consistent high quality experience. You can leverage the WAN/LAN networks that your organization has invested in for all sensitive data, and our solution also provides secure (encrypted) and reliable on-to-off network connectivity over the public internet.

This ensures the best of both worlds, and does not compromise quality by using the public internet as the only method to connect for video – as happens with a public shared cloud service (where all clients connect over the internet, even those on the same private network).

Can Polycom’s private hosted service be compared to a public cloud service? It can. But when it comes to meeting your evolving collaboration needs, offering a secure, uniquely personalized video collaboration option that’s deeply integrated with your applications and workflows, Polycom as an industry leader with over 25 years’ experience, solutions that deliver the highest quality video and audio, and interoperability with more standards and applications than any in the industry - there really is no comparison.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare