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Most companies are familiar with how public cloud computing works. You sign up for a third-party public cloud service, migrate whatever data you choose to the cloud via that service, and then pay for capacity based on how much you use at any given time. With a public cloud, your data is stored in an offsite data center. The most significant benefits of the public cloud are that it is highly flexible, available for quick scaling if necessary, and is cost efficient as long as you don't maintain a high capacity for a long period of time.
Perhaps the main reason why the public cloud is easier to understand than the private cloud is because the public cloud has more commonly understood use cases. Take Web email for example. Web email involves a vendor offering a standard cloud service to many different users via a model called SaaS (software as a service). The provider employs multi tenancy which means that a single service (in this case, Web email) and accompanying storage (for email messages and settings) are offered to many users, each of which can customize their own interface and settings (change the software’s appearance, set up email filters, etc.) and use the service to store information (their email messages).
Another issue with grasping the private cloud is that “it has many different faces, and it’s that sort of thing where it starts to mean everything,but as it starts to mean everything, it really means nothing,” says John Sloan, lead research analyst with Info-Tech Research Group .
So, how can you differentiate the private cloud from public alternatives? It all comes down to who owns the infrastructure and how it’s maintained.
“In a private cloud, you own all of the capacity,” says Sloan. “With a public cloud, the idea of elasticity and being metered is that slice of the public cloud that you can grow or shrink because the capacity is not owned by you; it’s owned by the cloud provider. But if you own all of the capacity upfront, then you’re not getting those cost benefits of elasticity because you also own the overhead. You aren’t just consuming your bit, you own the whole thing. That’s one thing that makes a private cloud maybe less cloudy.”
In essence, with private cloud computing you own the underlying infrastructure, so you’re avoiding the common multitenant approach of public clouds and instead storing your data on-site. The ability to differentiate the private from the public cloud is great, but it’s only half the battle. For a true private cloud offering, the underlying infrastructure will need to be virtualized. But just because you use virtualization in your organization, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have a private cloud environment in place.
VIRTUALIZATION VS. PRIVATE CLOUD
One problem with virtualization and the private cloud is that “sometimes, companies use them interchangeably,” says Lauren E. Nelson, an analyst with Forrester Research, but she warns that this “shouldn't be the case.” It’s one thing to have virtualization where you use commodity hardware and move the actual processing and management to a central software solution, but something else entirely to have a private cloud where everything is automated and requires very little attention from IT administrators.
“What you need to do is pool resources that can then be managed through a self-service portal where the actual provisioning of resources is completely automated,” says Nelson. “From there, it needs to be able to provide usage reports for the metering and tracking of resources.
It’s essentially taking your existing internal infrastructure and applying some key cloud-like features so that it has similar functionality to a public cloud, but within your own internal data center.”
But there’s more to the process than commoditizing the hardware, implementing virtualization, and setting up a Web portal. You also need to make sure the governing software is capable of handling your private cloud needs. “There are a lot of private cloud software solutions out there and so the first step is using [one of them rather than reinventing the wheel and trying to create your own solution,” says Nelson. She adds that another common mistake companies make is not enabling all of the capabilities of the software, so in essence, companies are implementing virtualization correctly, but not putting self-service access for end users and automatic provisioning place.
“They're not completely automating their process, and because of that, they’re not getting down to that 15-minute deployment time that you get with a private cloud,” Nelson says. Lawrence Pingree, research director with Gartner, explains that virtualization is the “underlying technology that makes clouds possible.” He also adds that “the word ‘private’ really just means ‘dedicated,’” so you know that in a private cloud environment, “the virtualization infrastructure is not shared with other tenants.” And to help separate the terms further, Pingree stresses that “virtualization does not have to include the cloud, since expanding and contracting across physical compute is not necessary to virtualize.” In essence, virtualization is necessary for a cloud to exist, but just because something is virtualized doesn't make it a true cloud Solution.
OTHER BENEFITS & CHALLENGES OF PRIVATE CLOUDS
One reason why private clouds are particularly helpful is that they move your data out of the multitenant environments that public cloud services use, which is important if you're concerned about security issues. “It’s about risk tolerance and looking at the risk of this particular application and this data and whether you can tolerate having it in a multitenant environment,” says Sloan. “In a multitenant environment, there could be risks to the data. But in a private cloud, you might be able to have more control over that application because you basically own the whole sandbox and you make sure it gets what it needs.”
Pingree agrees and recommends the private cloud for companies that require “stringent compliance mandates” or those that wish “not to share their compute resources with others.”
Another area where private clouds have a leg up over public cloud alternatives has to do with specific workloads that have “a lot of consistent usage over time,” according to Nelson. She says that many organizations will move applications out to the public cloud only to bring them back to a private cloud environment shortly thereafter. The reason for this is because the longer you keep data or applications in the cloud and the higher your capacity is, the more expensive the solution becomes. “It looks cheap when you're buying it in increments, but when you look at the yearly costs, it’s actually more expensive than doing it yourself,” says Nelson.
Unfortunately, “doing it yourself” with a private implementation can also lead to losing many of the benefits associated with the cloud in general. Nelson says that with a private cloud environment, you “become the cloud provider,” which means you will be “running and managing that infrastructure.” And in addition to have more responsibility over the cloud itself, you also lose the cost saving benefits of elasticity. “You're doing more and you don’t get the benefit of when you’re not using your resources,” says Nelson. You pay for all of the capacity all of the time, even when it’s not in use.
OFF-PREMISES PRIVATE CLOUD SERVICES
We have discussed on-premises solutions and how having the cloud in-house provides you with “full control over the entire stack, not only with the virtual infrastructure, but with the physical infrastructure underneath it,” says Sloan. But internal private clouds simply aren't a possibility for all companies. For instance, a larger company may find that it’s “ultimately better to have this as an internal resource because you can manage it and are in full compliance,” he says. But a smaller company may decide that it “can manage this stuff internally, but they can't guarantee the same level as an enterprise,” says Sloan.
In that case, a smaller company can invest in an off-premises private cloud where they have more control over the infrastructure, but still have enterprise-level skill and support from an experienced third party provider. Off-premises solutions are also great for adding capacity on a more permanent basis. You may already have a private cloud in place, but you want to add even more capacity without “expanding or building more infrastructure,” says Sloan. You can still get the scalability of the cloud without leaving your sensitive data or applications vulnerable to attacks. When it comes to off-premises solutions, Nelson warns that you have to make sure you're getting what you pay for. She says that there are two different types of off premises private clouds, virtual private clouds and hosted private clouds, but that there’s “a lot of flexibility in the market about how dedicated these are.” Nelson says that the biggest thing a company can do when it starts using off-premises private clouds is to “ask questions, because sometimes your storage is isolated, and sometimes it is not.”
A vendor may offer physically isolated private clouds that are completely separate and on their own servers, or they may offer virtually isolated environments that are separate from other clouds, but may be in the same rack sharing resources.
For Nelson, there are two huge benefits that come with using an off-premises private cloud as long as you communicate well with your vendor. The first is that you know the vendor has experience in “keeping workloads up and running” and how to “spend money on updates to make sure they have the best infrastructure and end support for those resources,” says Nelson.
Get some form of flexibility even if you sign up for a three- to five-year contract. “You'll commit to a certain amount of physical resources, but you have the ability to increase that if you need to,” says Nelson. “Typically, it takes two to five days to increase physical resources and you can get virtual resources in 15 minutes or less, like you can in the public cloud environment.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF A HYBRID APPROACH
Even if you decide that a private cloud is the best fit for you and you can handle its unique challenges, Sloan and Nelson both agree that most companies will want to use a hybrid cloud approach instead of relying on one over the other. For example, you could have a private cloud inhouse for your data and applications but then have the ability to “burst” into a public cloud for situations where an application “starts to get to the ceiling of your internal cloud” and requires more capacity for a limited amount of time.
You can also create a balance where low-risk data is stored on a public cloud and high-risk data is placed on a private cloud, but you can “still manage them with a single pane of glass,” says Sloan.
And if you're interested in off-premises solutions, you're in luck, because, as Nelson explains, off-premises solutions can often have the same interactive qualities as an internal private cloud to an external public one, creating that necessary hybrid approach.
Companies can make sure that their off-site public and private clouds housed in the same data center so that “some resources in one environment can interact greatly with a resource that it’s in the public cloud,” says Nelson.
The key to using cloud computing correctly is to take advantage of the unique benefits of public and private environments, while trying to minimize any potential disadvantages.
“Organizations trying to make a decision about how to approach cloud, should not think, ‘Am I going cloud or private?’
They should be thinking about specific workloads and what they’re trying to get done,” says Nelson.
“It’s looking at the public cloud as an opportunity for innovation for specific variable workloads and looking at the private cloud as, ‘Is this going to be a better way for me to manage my virtual resources?’ It’s more about increasing automation and slowly maturing your internal resources, but having a bigger opportunity in terms of new development projects for external resources.”
