Cloud has become top of mind for most organizations looking to optimize their IT but it also has become a big question. What is the best way to use the Cloud and in what form? Public, Hybrid or Private?
It has been proven that companies embracing cloud computing are reaping its benefits. With a Private Cloud, their IT infrastructures are transformed into dynamic, self-service environments. Employees can request and automatically receive new computing services, removing IT as a bottleneck and placing them as a business enabler providing them a new competitive advantage.
The operational savings of delivering a server or application in a matter of minutes or hours, versus days or weeks, is an extremely valuable incentive for many organizations. Last year, VMware’s own IT managed to save 90% of the time for provisioning and 30% of the costs by building out a self-service cloud. (Source: VMware website)
While the cost savings of virtualizing your data center are substantial and undeniable, the financial benefits and service delivery improvements of deploying on-demand, self-service private cloud infrastructures have savings that are at least as compelling if not even greater. However, this is not a solution for all types and company sizes.
When you think of computer resources in the cloud, you usually think of public clouds, such as the ones offered by Google or Amazon, with infrastructure or applications shared by millions of clients worldwide, through the Internet. However some organizations cannot move into public clouds, because of their organizational cultures or for security or regulatory concerns.
Private Cloud is an option in this case. A private cloud resides within the company environment (firewall) and its access is restricted, usually to company employees, clients or business partners.
The Gartner Institute has defined five key attributes for private clouds:
• Offering resources (infrastructure and applications) as services
• Flexibility and scale that meet client demands
• Resource sharing among a large number of users
• Measurement and payment according to use of the service (internal accounting)
• Use of Internet protocols and technologies to access cloud resources
Organizations consider using a private cloud for the following main benefits:
• Cost reduction,
• Service quality enhancement,
• Less time to deliver what users demand.
Standardization and automation reduce operational costs and free IT personnel to focus more on servicing customers than on activities with little or no added value, such as allocating disk space or configuring software.
Private clouds do not make sense for small businesses. But for large and even medium-sized businesses, IT teams can make parts of their infrastructures virtual, so they can use their business processes and computer resources in a private cloud. As the concept becomes more mature, the next step would be to move everything that needs more flexibility to the cloud.
The big advantage to a private cloud are predictability and visibility - you always know everything that's running and you always understand what might affect you. Decisions are made with facts and not mere guesses and prevent dealing with crisis management situations.
Try this Private Cloud Benefits TCO calculator from Cisco. Use it with your business objectives and find out more about the possibilities.
Download your free copy of our very own white paper on Cloud adoption, entitled Look to the Cloud: How Cloud Computing Can Deliver Savings to Mid-Sized Businesses.
And a good read…The best private cloud primer - for free! Private Cloud for Dummies eBook
If you’re interested in exploring a Private Cloud to optimize your IT and would like to discuss your challenges and look at options that would make sense to your organization, feel free to email me or call me at 1-866-610-8489.
Roger Osmond, President
Sentia