Cloud computing is mainstream and there are many rational reasons why this technology is popular in IT departments all over.

In the recent years, our IT colleagues have felt the increasing pressure to provide excellent computing services at cut-rate prices. According to a TDWI survey, cloud, in comparison to a traditional IT infrastructure, reduces IT costs by 27% and capital expenditure by 37%.

A low cost solution? Seems silly to not jump right on the bandwagon but, the same survey also asked participants what is preventing them from transforming their system to the cloud. The top three concerns were:

• Security threats, many people expressed their distaste at the thought of outsourcing their sensitive data to a third party who handles other client’s data as well.
• Governance Issues, between the internal and government standards for data – compliance is essential and many feel it’s already hard enough to control access to data on in-house systems.
• Data Integration, a headache many service providers are aware of. As cloud is still a relatively new technology, best practices and advanced integration software is still in its youth.

These apprehensions primarily reflect concerns over public clouds, but, choosing one or the other depends on the needs of your business.

So Why Public Cloud Platform?

Public clouds are available as services over the internet from a third-party provider. Users of public clouds do not own the physical infrastructure – they rent time, services, and storage.

Public clouds are pioneering the cloud trail, with far more usage and sophistication than their private counterparts.

According to Jason Bloomberg in, “Why You Really, Truly Don’t Want a Private Cloud”, “the more you focus on the business benefits of the Cloud, the more likely you’ll be leaning toward public over private deployment models.”

Cost and Capacity

Many of the public service providers, like Amazon and Microsoft, have enormous economies of scale with incredibly low operating margins. These service providers are equipped to enter a competitive price war against whatever private cost scenarios you think you can create.

Capacity depends on your business size, and how many projects you have. If the number isn’t in at least the hundreds, a private cloud will be ineffective and expensive. Essentially, a private cloud requires a homogenous data center. It entails identical physical servers, network equipment, virtualization technology, and so on.

Utilizing a public space, rather than building your own, keeps your infrastructure costs low. You won’t have to worry if there are spikes in your capacity demand. The public space has the elasticity to handle these ebbs and flows, unlike the private – when you’re tapped out, there’s no expanding.

Security

Yes, a common complaint against th public cloud is the lack of any regulation. This is only temporary; a competitive market responds to the demands of its constituents. In the very near future there will be intense auditing, in-depth and comprehensive service level-agreements, and so on.

Why So Private Cloud Platform?

Private clouds are set up by an in-house enterprise. A central IT group sets up the private cloud and provides it as a service to other organizations within the enterprise. Private clouds are also known as enterprise or infrastructure clouds.

According to TDWI’s Technology Survey, 53% of respondents reported having a preference for private clouds. Why?

Cost

IT departments need a low expense solution that allows them to reduce both capital and operating expenses without compromising on these key business requirements. Many larger companies have underutilized infrastructure; consolidating these centers reduces the capital expenditures. Once consolidated, operational expenditure is “reduced by improving efficiency through automation and improved management productivity,” according to the Database Consolidation onto Private Clouds white paper.

Reduced Complexity

A homogenous environment is much easier to manage than a complex one. By using a private cloud, IT departments have the ability to standardize their building blocks and reduce the number of supported configurations. This homogeneity keeps operational costs at a manageable rate and promotes automation of routine tasks. This, in turn, will allow IT colleagues to focus on development rather than the administrative tasks of managing a server environment.

Increased Quality of Service

In a private cloud space database performance can be easily monitored and managed. This allows for high system performance, availability, and security.

Improved Agility

Each business would like to have a faster time to market. A private cloud allows an agile and flexible environment where companies have the advantage of quickly responding to always changing business demands.

Three key aspects of agility are fast deployment, a private cloud infrastructure enables a simplified deployment process using standard hardware, software, and tools; rapid provisioning, deployment time is reduced using rapidly provisioned resources; resource elasticity, a private cloud gives you the opportunity to grow and shrink your database capacity, this gives your applications the flexibility to meet business workloads.

What About A Little Bit Of Both?

A hybrid cloud combines at least one private cloud and at least one public cloud, according to TechTarget.com. This can go either way, where a vendor who has a private cloud forms a partnership with a public cloud provider, or vice versa.

According to David Linthicum in “Why the Hybrid Cloud Model Is the Best Approach”, “hybrid cloud computing approaches have valid roles within enterprises as IT tries to mix and match public clouds and local IT assets to get the best bang for the buck.”

So why a hybrid solution? You can mix and max your resources between your local and on demand infrastructure. This lets you strategically use the best platforms for your applications and data, using the most expensive hardware located close to the business users for the heavily-used applications to run on.

This flexibility ensures availability, efficient utilization of your assets, and budget allocations for storage.

According to Elizabeth Phelan, vice president of software engineering at EMC Corporation, “Customers now want to make sure they’re setting up their environment [in such a way] that they have the ability to take advantage of hybrid cloud technology and not be locked [in a physical sense] to hardware, so they can move their business forward.”

Whichever You Choose…

Make sure you find the best fit for your organization. Overall, cloud is cost effective, increases efficiency and productivity, and provides a flexible and agile environment for your company.

Read about how the future of cloud is bright.