Private Clouds Get Real

Over the last two years, countless private cloud models have been introduced to the market all of which are becoming increasingly popular. According to Forrester, 46 percent of enterprises are prioritizing investments in private clouds this year. Private clouds refer to dedicated infrastructure that is not shared with other users, but still allow enterprises to take advantage of the benefits of cloud, including virtualization, scalability, flexibility and cost control. This growing momentum has created discussions about key characteristics as well as an ongoing industry debate on the pros and cons surrounding private clouds. Let’s highlight five key facts about private clouds:

1. Economics shouldn’t be the only driver: One of the great advantages of cloud computing is cost savings opportunities. However, with private clouds these savings are harder to realize for a couple of reasons. First, there is likely a cost of hardware associated with the deployment. Second, because the hardware is not shared only larger deployments begin to enjoy the benefits of the economies of scale. While there are some cost efficiencies to be had moving from an on-premise to a private cloud environment, the focus should be on business cost benefits.
2. Private can be off-premise: A recent Forrester study concluded 25 percent of enterprises building private clouds are opting for an off-premise deployment option. Off-premise, also called hosted private clouds, is a single-tenant private environment built at a third party data center. Hosted private clouds allow for better economics and feature many of same advantages of public clouds including scalability, flexibility, and agility.
3. Private can be open: Private clouds can also greatly benefit from open standards development tools. By keeping private clouds as standard and open as possible, enterprises can shift workloads as needed and avoid getting locked-in with a specific provider’s technology. The truth is, open standards hold a promising future and, as the cloud landscape matures, they will help speed up the maturity process and encourage more enterprises to leverage the cloud.
4. Don’t keep it all private: The promise to give enterprises a great level of visibility and control over their environments is compelling. However, because resources are dedicated, they are also limited and there is a greater need to ensure that the organization is able to tap public cloud environments during peak demand. FedEx, for example, is currently building a private cloud architecture, but CIO Rob Carter admitted that there’s “no doubt” his company will resort to public cloud architectures in addition to private.
5. Private, it’s just the beginning: These clouds could serve as a stepping stone for enterprises that need (or want) to retain some of the control over their cloud architectures. As public clouds mature, these organizations can develop the knowledge and confidence to combine their environments with public clouds, creating a fully functional hybrid IT solution.

The future of cloud computing is nothing but promising. Private clouds have started to gain momentum as enterprise customers require a single-tenant dedicated environment for certain workload applications. Mastering the key facts of private clouds is critical for its successful adoption and proper integration with traditional and other hybrid environments.