As with many things in our industry, the lines often get blurred (marketing may have something to do with it). Dedicated is an isolated environment deployed within the provider's data center. A virtual private cloud (VPC) is a variation of a dedicated cloud. A virtual private cloud combines concepts from a public and a dedicated cloud. VPC takes the concept of shared infrastructure and the economies of scale for servers and storage then combines it with an isolated network.

The very high cost of a dedicated cloud and the network challenges of noisy neighbors in a public cloud led service providers to the virtual private approach. VPC is the blending of strengths while trying to control some of the weaknesses. The name drives the blurred line in this service. A private cloud is typically deployed on client-owned infrastructure as an on-client-premise solution. A VPC is deployed on the service provider-owned infrastructure. This service would be more appropriately named a virtual dedicated cloud. Some providers have changed the name to eliminate some of the confusion within their product and solution sets.