Public cloud storage generally enables the sourcing of massive amounts of storage space on demand over the Internet, and is built over storage virtualization, which logically distributes large storage arrays into a multi-tenant architecture shared among various users and applications. Public cloud storage capacity is made possible through two different sourcing models:
- Web services APIs
- Thin client applications
Public cloud storage enabled through APIs is designed to be used for Web applications that require access to scalable storage at run time, whereas thin client applications provide end users with a way to back up and store their local data on remote cloud storage. Amazon S3, Mezeo and Windows Azure are popular examples of public cloud storage.
