Cloud Computing Deployment Model 4: Community Clouds

A community cloud in computing is a collaborative effort in which infrastructure is shared between several organizations from a specific community with common concerns (security, compliance, jurisdiction, etc.), whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally. The costs are spread over fewer users than a public cloud (but more than a private cloud), so only some of the cost savings potential of cloud computing are realized.

 

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For example, a group of SMEs could profit from community clouds to which different entities contribute with their respective (smaller) infrastructure. Community clouds can either aggregate public clouds or dedicated resource infrastructure. 

• In community clouds smaller organizations may come together only to pool their resources for building private community clouds.
• In contrast, cloud resellers may pool cloud resources from ddifferent providers and resell them.