One of the many decisions businesses face when considering whether to shift to cloud computing is which cloud model is right for them: private, public or hybrid? A private cloud, for example, is one in which the services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network. Making this decision involves consideration of many factors including security and control.

Companies must also consider business criticality of the applications they want to move to the cloud, regulatory issues, required service levels, usage patterns for the workloads and how integrated the application must be with other enterprise functions.

There are many benefits of migrating to a single tenant, dedicated private cloud, including the ability to design, deploy and manage the application delivery lifecycle, including software development, Web applications and business services, while mitigating risk and avoiding costly hardware purchases.

Other advantages include: reducing risks by cutting costs on IT infrastructure; keeping up with growth pains affordably by adding resources on a pay as you go basis; and freeing up IT staff to do more with greater efficiency.

In fact, private cloud deployments across workloads is the primary preference among enterprise cloud service buyers, according to recent research that found concerns about security run rampant among IT decision makers.

Seventy percent of responders said they wanted to run financial applications and ERP in a private cloud setting, 60 percent said the same about e-mail and collaboration, and 55 percent said private cloud was the place for custom applications, according to the Everest Group report “Enterprise Cloud Adoption Survey 2013.”

As with any new technology, IT decision makers must immerse themselves and understand the context of the user while balancing business needs – a tall order for any CIO. On June 13, the Savvisdirect webinar, “What a Private Cloud Can Do For Your Business,” will address the topic of private cloud deployments and discuss the value of separating infrastructure from applications.