Where is your data stored, and under which legislation does it fall? Geopolitical uncertainty and an increasing focus on Europe’s digital dependence are making the answers to these questions more pressing. As a result, the sovereign cloud is taking its place alongside the familiar concepts of the public and private cloud.
The cloud environment to best meet your organisation's needs depends on the workload. Different applications have different requirements, which is why many organisations use a combination of different cloud environments.
What is a public cloud?
With a public cloud, you use the infrastructure of a public cloud provider. Well-known examples include Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud. The provider makes its infrastructure available to multiple clients, isolating each client’s data and applications from the others.
A key characteristic of a public cloud is elasticity. Available capacity can scale up automatically when an application suddenly needs more processing power or storage space. Once demand drops, that capacity is scaled back down. This is useful for online shops and other applications with fluctuating user numbers.
A public cloud is also a good option when applications need to be available in different countries or even continents. Large cloud providers have infrastructure in multiple regions, which allows organisations to spread their environment across different data centres.
You also don’t need to invest in the underlying infrastructure yourself. The cloud provider takes care of the hardware and maintenance. Costs generally follow usage.
What is a private cloud?
With a private cloud, the cloud environment is isolated with more control over how it is set up and managed. The private cloud environment can run on the organisation’s own infrastructure or via an external cloud provider. With the latter, the underlying infrastructure may be shared with other clients.
A private cloud gives you greater control over configuration and management, for example when you have specific performance or access requirements.
With an external private cloud, you don’t need to build or maintain a data centre yourself. Instead, you draw on the infrastructure and expertise of a specialist provider.
The Cheops Cloud offers a private cloud environment. Cheops manages this infrastructure in Belgium and provides direct connections to public cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure and AWS.
What is a sovereign cloud?
A sovereign cloud is not a separate type of infrastructure. The term refers to the control you have over a cloud environment: where your data is stored, which legislation applies and who manages the environment.
An organisation can have a fully isolated private environment while its data is stored in another country, or its management depends on a foreign supplier.
For governments and organisations that process sensitive data, those criteria are especially important. Other types of companies are taking a more critical look at their dependence on international technology providers and what that means for their data.
Cheops’s own cloud environment is a sovereign cloud. The data is stored in Belgium, and Cheops uses its own staff and own infrastructure to manage the environment.
Comparing public, private and sovereign clouds
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| Infrastructure
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A public cloud provider’s infrastructure | Isolated cloud environment on own or external infrastructure | Private cloud environment in Belgium |
| Scalability
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Very high and flexible | Depends on the available infrastructure | Depends on the available infrastructure |
| Control
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More responsibility lies with the provider | More direct control over configuration and management | Managed by Cheops |
| Data residency
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Choice of the provider’s available regions | Depends on infrastructure and provider | Data in Belgium |
| Jurisdiction
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Depends on provider and services chosen | Depends on location and provider | Belgian and European law |
| Typical use cases
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Flexible, highly scalable workloads | Workloads with specific technical or security requirements | Workloads with strict data and compliance requirements |
Which cloud suits which workload?
Deciding on a cloud environment starts with the workload. A workload consists of applications and components that work together to deliver functionality. Like Dynamics and Power BI, when they are closely connected. Assessing these kinds of components separately makes little sense.
For each workload, Cheops looks at five criteria:
- business continuity
- cost efficiency
- quality, security
- compliance
Each one has a different weighting. Camera footage, for example, requires a lot of storage capacity, but for some organisations, it’s not a problem if that footage is temporarily unavailable. That calls for different infrastructure than a business-critical application that must be available at all times.
An online shop with clear seasonal peaks benefits from the elasticity of a public cloud. For workloads with sensitive data or strict requirements around data residency and jurisdiction, a sovereign cloud environment is a more suitable option.
Requirements differ from workload to workload. As a result, workloads often end up in different environments, creating a hybrid cloud environment. A scalable customer-facing application, for example, runs in a public cloud, while internal systems stay in a private or sovereign environment. Local infrastructure is still a sensible choice for applications where the cloud offers little benefit.
One management layer for your entire cloud environment
Cheops manages public, private and sovereign clouds from a single service model. For each workload, you choose the environment that fits best, without being tied to a single cloud model or provider. Cheops takes care of management across the different environments.
Which cloud environment is best for your workloads?
With the Cheops Cloud Readiness Assessment, you can find out which cloud environment best meets the requirements of your applications.