Cloud computing is a big business and can be classified in two categories – consumer cloud and enterprise cloud. Although we are using cloud solutions, many still fail to understand the difference between consumer cloud and business cloud. This piece explains it all clearly.

1. CLOUD COMPUTING –
CONSUMER VS BUSINESS
SOLUTIONS

2. Advanced cloud solutions from market leaders and other
small-med cloud service providers have significantly helped
disseminate cloud technology. Although we are ringed by
cloud and use it broadly, many still don't understand what
cloud is and how it actually matters.
For a common user, comprehending cloud technology must be
way complicated; though they are using it they don't fully
understand it and we can't blame them. But don't confuse
business cloud with consumer cloud as both are different
features of cloud services. There's a line between these two
local computing and cloud computing and when it comes to
business, there is an entirely different cloud.

3. Consumer Cloud
Wikipedia defines cloud computing as “Cloud computing is a
model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand
network access to a shared pool of configurable computing
resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and
services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with
minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”
Difficult, isn't it? For a common user, such technical
definitions will certainly be something complicated to get
through.
In simpler words, consumer cloud involves services that
would have required on-site storage, computing and
hardware, but now, all of these can be offered from remote
elastic storage and devices such as notebooks, smartphones

4. and personal computers. So basically, it demonstrates a
combined set of service offering that provides a far better user
experience.
Let's make it even more easier with some examples. Facebook,
Dropbox, Instagram, Twitter, all of these are consumer cloud
services. Some other major cloud platforms that you're
probably using include Microsoft Office Online, Google Apps
such as Google Drive, and Apple iCloud. So you're using cloud
to store a limited amount of data, synchronize data, access
online data or share files and folders over the internet. Unlike
large enterprises, their demands are not high-end.
Cloud storage is undoubtedly the most widely used cloud-
based service currently, available for both common user and
commercial purpose.

5. . In addition, consumers are also trying to take advantage of
this trend, as a report from Gartner says that these
consumers are likely to locate more than a third of their
digital data in the cloud in the coming year. As these are low-
cost and certain platforms are also free, consumers are
making the most of it for storing their digital content.
These sort of free cloud offerings are a great choice for
individuals, but if you think about integrating it with your
business, you'll have to consider the way around because it's
business data that we are talking about here; data that
includes confidential information.

6. Business Cloud
When we talk about cloud solutions for business, the
requirements are entirely different. So to begin with, let's
discuss about the various cloud platforms available such as
--Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – A platform where the
service provider hosts client's applications and allow them to
access the data over the Internet
--Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) – Where the third-party
provider offer cloud services to clients to deploy and develop
applications for business use.
--Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) - A form of cloud solution
that provides virtualized computing resources over the
Internet.

7. Cloud service users are also given the advantages of using the
expertise and staff or the vendors, and the resources that
otherwise may not be available to the company. Moreover,
advanced cloud solutions offers sophisticated solutions to
businesses that small organizations would not be able to
afford.
When it comes to choosing cloud services, from a average
consumer's perspective, they don't necessarily focus on acute
features, but pick up the one that is more convenient.
However, businesses think somewhat distinctly, to be more
precise, they are more cautious as they are not dealing with
some random data, but customers' sensitive data. Services
like Dropbox and Google Drive are suitable for consumers, but
for businesses they have to be more attentive when selecting
a cloud service provider.

8. Businesses hold financial records and customers' sensitive
data which needs to stored at secure location. They need to
ensure that all digital content they hold should be residing at
a location that is safe and can't be compromised. These
include considering factors such as security, performance,
collaboration, price, profitability, service quality, etc.
Cloud is a vast concept and it has been offering its range of
benefits to a larger audience in different aspects. So the
conclusion is that cloud services for average consumers and
commercial consumers are different and so are their
requirements. Individuals have a plethora of option to store
data in the cloud, backup files and folders and access data
from anywhere, anytime. For businesses, there are much
better cloud solutions available.

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