Cloud Computing: Private Clouds

There has been a lot of talk about private versus public clouds because of data security concerns. A private cloud is a proprietary network or data center that supplies hosted services to a limited number of people. Private clouds generally pose fewer security and privacy risks than public clouds.

What distinguishes private clouds from the average data center is the ability to pay-per-use and scale usage up or down as demand dictates. This scalability is made possible by the pooling of storage resources.

With cost and scalability being two important business issues, private clouds are extremely attractive to many businesses. According to a recent InformationWeek survey, more than half of the business technology professionals interviewed said that “they’re either using private clouds (28%) or planning to do so (30%).”   That said, there is still a lot of hesitation when it comes to implementing a private cloud environment.  With a heavy technology investment needed, businesses quite rightfully are trying to determine whether the long-term savings will be worth the upfront investment.

Forrester Analyst, James Staten, believes that most businesses are not ready for an internal cloud because they “lack the experience and maturity to manage such an environment.”  Staten says that “to be ready, they must first scale operational standardization, automation, and virtualization mountains.”

With automation and consolidation being best practices for running a better, more efficient data center, perhaps preparing for a private cloud will inadvertently help companies optimize their data center?