= What is a private cloud? =
The private cloud is defined as computing services offered either over the Internet or a private internal network and only to select users instead of the general public. Also called an internal or corporate cloud, private cloud computing gives businesses many of the benefits of a public cloud - including self-service, scalability, and elasticity - with the additional control and customisation available from dedicated resources over a computing infrastructure hosted on-premises. In addition, privatedeliver a higher level of security and privacy through both company firewalls and internal hosting to ensure operations and sensitive data are not accessible to third-party providers. One drawback is that the companyâÃÂÃÂs IT department is held responsible for the cost and accountability of managing the private cloud. So privaterequire the same staffing, management, and maintenance expenses as traditional datacentre ownership.
Two models for cloud services can be delivered in a private cloud. The first is infrastructure as a service (IaaS) that allows a company to use infrastructure resources such as compute, network, and storage as a service. The second is platform as a service (PaaS) that lets a company deliver everything from simple cloud-based applications to sophisticated-enabled enterprise applications. Privatecan also be combined with publicto create a hybrid cloud, allowing the business to take advantage of cloud bursting to free up more space and scale computing services to the public cloud when computing demand increases.
== Related products and services ==
Virtual Network
Provision private networks, optionally connect to on-premises data centres
Azure ExpressRoute
Dedicated private-network fibre connections to Azure
Microsoft Azure
