Cloud infrastructure can actually be split up into three different types

Public Cloud - These are the clouds you see being offered by Amazon, Google, Microsoft to name the big players. Services offered on Public Clouds are Office 365 on Azure , S3 Buckets on AWS and Google Code projects on Google. These are usually the cheapest but limited in regards to customizations.

Internal Self Hosted Cloud - These are servers hosted and owned by the business providing totally customizable features to the business for their software and speed requirements.

Private Cloud - This is a mixture of the above which entails a third party provider such as Response IT hosting or providing your IT infrastructure giving you ultimate customizability in your hardware and speed needs with the reduced support of hardware and network by your organisation.

What solution is right for your business?

Business Size - Most small business and startups will start off on the Public Cloud with applications like Office 365 , One Drive for Business and Skype for Business. This gives them all the services they need to start the setup their company at a small cost which can grow. More developed companies will start to use a custom applications for their industry and this will need to be hosted on a standalone server if the application provider does not provide a hosted solution. This will then leverage into Private or Internal Cloud

Latency - So applications are very time sensitive which means hosting them on the public cloud will be a non-starter to begin with. Application providers will only support the Application with SLA's in regards to round trip times from the server so an Internet Cloud will have to be used but usually backed up with a Private or Public Cloud

Data Sovereignty - Legalities on each industry and country change the rules on where your data can or can't be stored. Companies such as Goverment, Legal and Finance usually have strict requirements of keeping their data in country with proof. Other industries face Audits of proving to their users where their data is at any time. Internal clouds are the best for this , however Private and now Public clouds are making themselves full compliant with Data Sovereignty issues

Contact Response IT for Solutions in all three clouds. We see three as better than one