Top 3 Private Cloud Adoption Myths Dispelled

Private cloud, also called corporate cloud, resides within an organization and its access is restricted, usually to the employees and business partners. The path to private cloud seems almost destined for many organizations. Organizations believe on investing in consolidated servers and virtualization, the next wise step is private cloud.

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Well, it’s actually. But gaining efficiency on virtualization doesn’t mean a full-blown switch to private cloud. The realization of private cloud goes beyond virtualization. Here are some of the common private cloud adoption myths and facts.

Charge Back or Show Back Process is Not for Private Cloud

Myth: Well-established billing system is a must for public cloud operation so that customers and users can be charged for resource usage. But, it brings out that chargeback process plays a critical role in private clouds as well.

Fact: Private cloud offers on-demand access to IT resources i.e. ability to instantly spin up storage and computing. This arise a serious risk of over-consumption of IT resources. A well-executed show-back process can help businesses align revenue and opportunity against expenses of IT by delivering deep visibility into the cost of each operation and services. This helps business and application owners to make improved decisions about projects that are worth pursuing. It can also push resource decision making responsibility back to the business units where it fits.

Automation & Virtualization Equates to Private Cloud

Myth: A very common myth associated with private cloud is that automation software can modify conventional IT infrastructure into a cloud.

Fact: Well, the above said works well only if a bare virtual machine has to be provisioned. But, when the demand rises to provision back up software, operating systems, network and much more then all such requirements need to fit-in automatically as additional demands are added by new users. In a conventional IT environment, these requests are highly customized and thus, the number of potential configurations and combinations overcome the automation ability.

Once the complexities associated with IT have been overcome only then automation succeeds. One of the vital steps is infrastructure standardization. Service offerings and levels are predefined by cloud service providers rather customizing services. For example, a small number of particular service levels such as replicated storage, basic storage and high performance storage can be supported by standardization of storage.

Conventional Security can be twisted with Private Cloud

Myth: Corporations create strong firewalls that are built between distinct segments of servers (finance servers, data servers, etc.) in a conventional datacenter security environment. But, a complex network exists in a private cloud so; IT resources need to evaluate how to shield servers from each other in this situation.

Fact: While making the move to virtual servers, too many corporations bear limited network regulations between them. Highly automated controls should function on each of the servers themselves. So, should you invest in applications firewalls, hypervisor security or federated identity management tools? Is their requirement for all? Yes, definitely and probably much more.

Better monitoring, visibility and management tools are required to accomplish benefits of private cloud completely. Without them, private cloud won’t simply scale-up as required. Build availability, accessibility, scalability and visibility the way it should be in a private cloud.