There are two main types of cloud models depending on the needs of the customers: public versus private and multi-tenant versus single-tenant. These different cloud types offer different levels of management, security, and pricing.

A public cloud consists of resources that are located off-site over the internet. In a public cloud, the infrastructure is typically multi-tenant. Multiple customers can share the same underlying hardware or server. Resources such as networking, storage, power, cooling and computing are all shared. The customer usually has no visibility of where this infrastructure is hosted except for choosing a geographic region. The pricing mode of a public cloud service is based on the volume of data, the computing power that is used and other infrastructure-management-related services—or, more precisely, a mix of RAM, vCPUs, disk, and bandwidth.

In a private cloud, the resources are dedicated to a single customer; the architecture is single-tenant instead of multi-tenant. The servers are located on premise or in a remote data center. Customers own (or rent) the infrastructure and are responsible for maintaining it. Private cloud infrastructures are more expensive to operate as they require dedicated hardware to be secured for a single tenant. Customers of the private cloud have more control over their infrastructure, and therefore they can achieve their compliance and security requirements.

Hybrid clouds are composed of a mix of public clouds and private ones.

The GCP is a public multi-tenant cloud platform. You share the servers you use with other customers and let Google handle the support, the data centers, and the infrastructure.