What is the Difference between Data Center and Cloud?

Any business organization faces a primary challenge while assembling and aligning an IT project is determining where the data and supported processing power will be present. With advancements in virtualization and distributed computing technologies, it has become easier to develop digital systems that are hosted and function fully on the physically remote hardware. Any business can choose two deployment options- Cloud Data Center or Cloud and the Traditional Data Center or Data Center.

• Data Centers

A data center depicts a location that remains accessible to all the members of an enterprise and houses hardware along with the supported devices for running internal computing networks, hosting digital systems and applications, or even just storing data.

The traditional data center is usually present on-premise with the entire functionality present in a physical site within an enterprise office perimeter. An in-house IT Team usually manages the data centers.

• Cloud

A Cloud data center or Cloud serves the same purpose as the traditional data centers. However, Cloud can be physically present elsewhere and distributed across several locations. Cloud also creates the base for IT infrastructure for any business organization. Clouds are usually managed through third-party Cloud service providers. With Cloud, an enterprise’s stakeholders usually can’t physically see the hardware that hosts their systems and applications.