When talking about cloud strategy with Customers, or doing assessments, I often get this question:

“Should we go public, private, or hybrid?”

As a Cloud Architect, I could give a technical breakdown. But over time, I’ve learned the real answer depends on the business context. And usually we will explore all the possibilities.

Public Cloud: When Agility Wins

Public cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP are the go-to choice for organizations prioritizing speed, scalability, and innovation.

Common Use Cases

• SaaS workloads and APIs
• Startup MVPs and PoCs
• Temporary or burst-heavy compute needs

➕ Pros

• Instant provisioning
• Global scalability
• Rich ecosystem of managed services

➖ Cons

• Cost can grow unpredictably without governance
• Vendor lock-in concerns
• Some regulatory compliance limitations

Private Cloud: Still Relevant — But Why?

Private cloud (or even classic virtualized datacenters) still makes sense in several cases — especially in regulated industries, or where legacy systems cannot be easily moved.

Common Use Cases

• Finance and healthcare (compliance-driven)
• Critical internal systems not built for the cloud
• Environments with strict latency or data locality requirements

➕ Pros

• Full control over infrastructure and security
• Predictable cost (CapEx)
• Isolation from shared environments

➖ Cons

• Slower to scale
• Hardware lifecycle management
• Higher maintenance overhead

Hybrid Cloud: Often the Default — But Rarely Simple

Hybrid architectures sound like the best of both worlds. But in practice, they introduce complexity — especially around network integration, identity federation, and policy enforcement across environments.

One of the biggest pain points I see in hybrid deployments is building secure, resilient, and scalable connectivity between on-prem systems and public cloud services.

This is where tools like CloudConnexa shine — read full article here.

With CloudConnexa, you can build a full mesh private overlay network that connects:

• 🏢 Your on-prem datacenter
• ☁️ AWS, Azure, or other public cloud environments
• 👤 Remote users and teams — without opening ports or deploying VPN appliances

It’s a ZTNA-aligned, cloud-delivered approach that simplifies what used to require hours of firewall, NAT, and routing configuration.

Real-World PoC: Bridging AWS and Proxmox with CloudConnexa

To test how hybrid networking could work without traditional VPN appliances or complex routing, I setup a PoC using CloudConnexa to interconnect:

• An AWS VPC with EC2 instances running internal services
• Two on-premises networks hosted on Proxmox, simulating legacy datacenter environments
• A remote laptop client accessing everything through the mesh

The setup looked like this:

Each location (AWS, Proxmox LANs, and my client) was joined to the same CloudConnexa private network using lightweight connectors or clients.

Results:

• Full mesh routing worked instantly, without needing static routes or NAT
• All traffic encrypted end-to-end — no open ports or public IP exposure
• Centralized access policies made it easy to isolate systems and enforce rules

Lessons from the Field

From real-world conversations with Customers, one thing is clear:
Choosing a cloud model is never just about tech.

It’s about:

• Business maturity and risk tolerance
• Team skillsets and ownership
• Regulatory context
• Appetite for operational change

Public, private, or hybrid?
There’s no universally right answer — but there is a right fit for every business.

Understand your real needs.
Start small.
Keep your architecture flexible.

And above all, remember:

Cloud is not a destination — it’s a strategy.