The public cloud refers to cloud services (such as virtual machines, storage, or applications) offered publicly by a commercial provider to businesses and individuals. Public cloud resources are hosted on the commercial provider’s hardware, which users access through the internet. This differs from a private cloud, in which computing infrastructure is owned and operated by a single organization for its internal use.

The public cloud is not always suitable for organizations in highly-regulated industries, such as healthcare or finance, as public cloud environments may not comply with industry regulations regarding customer data.

For more educational resources related to the public cloud, please visit:

• A General Introduction to Cloud Computing
• Introduction to the Cloud Curriculum
• An Introduction to Cloud Hosting

A complete list of our educational resources related to cloud computing is available on our Cloud Computing page.