Managed cloud versus unmanaged cloud

The cloud market has also diversified into two large segments—managed cloud versus unmanaged cloud.

In an unmanaged cloud platform, the infrastructure is self-served. In case of failure, it is the responsibility of the customer to have some mechanisms in place to restore the operations. Unmanaged cloud requires the customer to have the qualified expertise and resources to build, manage, and maintain cloud instances and infrastructures. Focused on self-serving applications, unmanaged cloud offers do not include support with their basic tiers.

In a managed cloud platform, the provider will support the underlying infrastructure by offering monitoring, troubleshooting, and around-the-clock customer service. Managed cloud brings along qualified expertise and resources to the team right away. For many companies, having a service provider to handle their public cloud can be easier and more cost-effective than hiring their own staff to operate their clouds.

The GCP is a public, multi-tenant, and unmanaged cloud service. So are AWS and Azure. Rackspace, on the other hand, is an example of a managed cloud service company. As an example, Rackspace just started offering managed services for GCP in March 2017.