What best describes a public cloud?

A public cloud is best described as a virtualized, multi-tenant architecture. This means that the cloud resources, such as servers, storage, and applications, are shared among multiple customers or tenants, which allows providers to efficiently allocate resources and optimize costs.

In a public cloud environment, the infrastructure is owned and operated by third-party cloud providers who make these resources available to the public over the internet. This model promotes scalability and flexibility, allowing businesses to easily scale their IT resources up or down as needed without the overhead costs associated with maintaining physical hardware.

The multi-tenant nature of public clouds enables different organizations to utilize the same underlying infrastructure, which can lead to cost savings and ease of use. Users benefit from the latest technology without the burden of hardware management and maintenance, as these aspects are handled by the cloud service provider.

In contrast, other descriptions like secured single-tenant infrastructure refer to private cloud setups where resources are dedicated to a single organization, and options like local private server and dedicated on-premise system highlight configurations that do not involve shared infrastructure and storage, making them distinctly different from the public cloud concept.