Manufacturing firms in the UK reported a 15% growth in exports to other EU countries in 2021, and experts predict they will increase in 2022. Enhanced agility will be essential for manufacturers, especially with shipping and supply chain challenges hampering the industry as a whole.

Although the factors are out of the control of most firms, manufacturers can respond by ensuring up-to-date data, data accuracy, enhanced data security, and continuous availability and accessibility. A cloud computing solution that provides real-time visibility over crucial data can help manufacturers navigate the challenges of changing operational costs and supply chain changes.

However, many organisations are torn between migrating to a private vs a public cloud environment. The public cloud is a cloud computing paradigm delivered through the internet. It follows a multi-tenancy model, where multiple consumers share the same virtualised resources. Furthermore, a public cloud provider hosts the computing resources shared across many tenants through a subscription-based pricing model. On the other hand, a private cloud is an infrastructure service controlled by a single consumer. The computing resources are exclusive to one business and can be hosted in an on-site data centre or by a third-party service provider. The million-dollar question is, which of the two models is more suited for manufacturers?

Benefits of Running Applications in a Private Cloud

• Predictable Resource Usage

  Manufacturers with consistent and predictable resource demands should use a private cloud provider to run their enterprise applications. It allows them to optimise resource usage and reduce cloud spending. In addition, private cloud infrastructure is wholly owned by an organisation. Therefore, manufacturers can customise it to meet running applications, hardware and software needs. Complete control ensures they can change the computing resources to meet specific application requirements. The monthly costs are predictable.

• Enhanced Security

  Manufacturers require strong security to protect highly sensitive information like patents, intellectual properties, research and development, and innovations.

  In the UK, more than half of manufacturers have been victims of cybercrime victims due to accelerated remote working strategies. With this in mind suppliers and customers have asked 43% of manufacturing organisations to demonstrate data security readiness. With a private cloud, manufacturers have full control of their data security as it permits them to implement security safeguards to meet specific organisational security and compliance requirements. Also, data can only be accessed via private, secure network connections in contrast to a public cloud, where the insecure public internet is the main way of accessing cloud data.

  All of this is managed by highly skilled engineers with the specific skills needed to actively manage a private cloud environment. Replicating this level of expertise in a public cloud environment can be difficult, without a vast knowledge of the infrastructure an organisation can open themselves up to cyber threats.

• Regulatory Compliance

  Organisations in the UK manufacturing industry must comply with multiple regulatory compliance standards, such as GDPR, PCI DSS, ISA-99/IEC 62443 standard, and the Directive on the Re-Use of Public Sector Information (PSI). The control and security benefits of a private cloud infrastructure enable manufacturers to meet most regulatory compliance requirements, but the primary reason a private cloud helps address significant compliance components is the role of the service provider. When deploying private cloud infrastructure, the service provider works with the client to implement compliance requirements, thus enabling compliance by design.

• Compatibility with Legacy Applications

  Most manufacturing firms rely on legacy applications to run crucial operations and industrial control systems. Hence, when adopting a cloud infrastructure, they must easily ensure compatibility to migrate data and workloads. A public cloud comes with off-the-shelf infrastructure, meaning it cannot be customised to support existing legacy applications. However, when building a private cloud infrastructure, a service provider can tailor it to ensure the legacy applications can be deployed and integrated seamlessly with the new components. Enabling compatibility with legacy applications is vital to successful cloud migration and achieving the desired benefits of a functional cloud environment.

• Provides enhanced visibility

  The private cloud is , virtualized environment and a plus for manufacturing firms looking to adopt a cloud strategy. Many manufacturers run a wide variety of applications, with each requiring specific hardware specifications. As such, virtualizing a cloud resource, such as servers, to run specific applications enables manufacturers to decrease or increase available resources to meet the required computing needs. Subsequently, an organisation can register performance improvements since it can provision more memory and computing power for more resource-intensive applications. At the same time, the enhanced flexibility enables cost savings since the resources to run more resource-intensive applications are drawn from underutilized servers as opposed to a public cloud that would provide more resources at increased costs.

Why should Manufacturers prioritise private over public cloud?

When you run critical applications in a public cloud, you become a guest in someone else's resources and systems. A public cloud is not bespoke since an off-the-shelf product means that the provider has configured the cloud resources to serve as many consumers as possible but not to fit your business specific computing needs. As a result, a public cloud may not be the right fit for running specific legacy or critical applications for your manufacturing firm.

Similarly, public cloud providers configure security the same way for all consumers. Due to the criticality and sensitivity of data used by manufacturing firms, a generic security approach may expose them to security challenges and regulatory compliance difficulties. Furthermore, multitenancy increases the risks of unauthorised access to confidential applications and information. Malicious actors in the same environment can exploit vulnerabilities to access your cloud environment, which may cause large data breaches. The same multi-tenancy approach allows all tenants in a cloud environment to fight for the same resources. It increases latency and may degrade performance, yet manufacturers require optimised performance to run resource-intensive applications and production systems.

There is also the issue of meeting data protection compliance requirements. Public cloud providers deploy servers and other computing facilities across multiple jurisdictions. For UK-based organisations, allowing cloud providers to store their data in different countries may result in compliance violations. For example, the GDPR requires manufacturers to store data in their origin country, which may be hard to achieve if a public cloud stores the data in multiple countries.

Private Cloud for your Manufacturing Firm

If your manufacturing firm is looking at your cloud adoption options, schedule a call with a Cloud Geeni consultant today. Our consultants specialise in the manufacturing sector and can offer industry tailored advice.

We offer a no obligation audit of your current IT set up, providing your manufacturing firm with valuable information you can use to inform future infrastructure conversations.