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Things to Consider On the Road to a Private Cloud

A company’s size and its cloud computing prerequisites dictate the scale of services it will require. Cloud features, such as scalability and on-demand resource allocation, are fundamental to why an increasing number of small companies and large enterprises are incorporating the cloud into their business. Over time, they’ve been able to see why major global companies have increased their investments in the cloud and on cloud-based initiatives. These investments reflect not only the importance these companies place on this technology trend, but they indicate where these companies think the future of cloud computing is headed.

One such area of importance is the private cloud. But some of the issues for companies are how exactly to get there. Three primary factors to be considered when deciding whether to leverage and implement a private cloud are reliability, availability, and scalability. With a private cloud, computing is internalized within a company. The underlying technology that allows IT systems to obtain and use resources on demand is still in place, but the company is typically the only user of the resources and it is hosted in the company's own datacenter, or a dedicated area in a shared datacenter.

Some other questions to consider when deciding on private cloud implementation are the following: Have you implemented a virtual first policy? What do you use virtualization for today? and, Do you have IT resources defined as virtual infrastructure architects?

The relationship between virtualization and the cloud is a close one. From an architectural standpoint, there are so many benefits to virtualizing resources. The savings are significant, such as better use of infrastructure, near 100 percent availability, and simplified cloud management – all this means better operational efficiency. Like cloud computing, there’s efficiency in the underlying hardware requirements. In essence, you need less hardware or less expensive hardware to do the same work. Ultimately, what virtualization components are in place today will support a company’s move into a private cloud.

Edited by Carrie Schmelkin

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