Forrester: Top Facts About Private Cloud

This is an older item. It summarizes an article by Lauren E. Nelson of Forrester, published in Computer Weekly; the link to the original is at the end.

Cloud is an essential part of enterprise technology management, but sifting through market noise to design a cloud strategy is not easy. Developers and business leaders go to the public cloud because they value the autonomy, agility and productivity it gives them, not because it is cheaper. Your private cloud objectives should match the experience they want.

Private clouds bring benefits such as scalability, cost savings and developer enablement, but most of these are not inherent to every cloud deployment type. Technology teams must become a credible cloud services provider and see the business as a free-market customer. That transition is hard, because internal teams tend to favor optimization and cost-saving over using cloud to speed up the business.

Forrester recommends that technology leaders know these 10 private cloud facts before designing a strategy.

Fact 1. Cloudwashing is rampant, and you are probably doing it too

A cloud label does not mean the environment delivers cloud value. Although 29% of North American and European enterprises report private cloud adoption, actual adoption is low. Few enable the three core components: self-service access, tracking and monitoring of resources, and full automation.

Fact 2. Private cloud labels cover a range of environments

Forrester sees four approaches, driven by different strategies: enhanced virtualization, test/development cloud, public-cloud-lite, and transformational cloud. Each has its own priorities, budgets, keys to success and challenges.

Fact 3. Operational efficiency is good, but developer enablement is better

For the past 10 years the focus has been operational efficiency. Leading enterprises now focus on the business, using new technologies to set themselves apart from competitors.

Fact 4. Transformational hybrid cloud strategies move slowly

Fixing the old and aligning the new at the same time is long and hard. A transformational approach can be a strong long-term strategy, but it is slow, so provide dynamic resources to product and marketing groups in the short term.

Fact 5. The slow steps are integration and process automation

New resources are not what slows private cloud adoption. Connecting them to legacy systems of record, operational processes and helpdesk systems is. Find the minimal level of integration you need for a first success, then plan deeper integration as required.

Fact 6. One environment does not fit all workloads

Enterprises no longer ask whether to choose public or private cloud as an all-or-nothing matter. They ask which to use for each application or workload. Leading enterprises go further and optimize their whole application-sourcing strategy across internal and external options.

Fact 7. Cloud economics is tied to public cloud, not private

The cost savings are linked to specific use cases and largely to public cloud. Reaching cloud economics in a private cloud needs a large, diverse usage base, highly standardized costs, pervasive chargeback, and aggressive capacity planning and consolidation. That is out of reach for many enterprises because of policy and process.

Fact 8. Private cloud ROI is a struggle without tracking employee efficiency

ROI is not straightforward and should not be the main justification. Many published case studies boast hard cost savings, but most fold virtualization and consolidation savings into the total, which are savings unique to less mature enterprises.

Fact 9. Private cloud must start with organizational change and effective incentives

Automation, outsourcing and cloud threaten infrastructure, operations and security teams. Incentives that reward change and show a career path are essential.

The foundation of any private cloud is virtual infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Many infrastructure and operations leaders also want a platform as a service (PaaS). You probably need a blend of both, and in the public clouds IaaS and PaaS are blending.

Source: Forrester: Top 10 facts about private cloud.

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