Is the private cloud the right decision for my company?

There is much pressure surrounding private clouds, meaning, creating a private infrastructure that can deliver the same flexibility and scalability as public clouds from well known providers. The great advantage of private clouds is that they come without the security and control worries for sending data outside the company’s own walls.

Private infrastructures assume that a company has full control of its infrastructure but also that a percentage of its capital is spent for the development, maintenance and upgrade of this infrastructure.  Most medium and large size businesses have the ability to build a private cloud. But why would a company bother spending the time and resources to make their own clouds there are so many shared and hybrid options available today through numerous cloud hosing providers?

If you want to decide if the private cloud is the best option for your business, first you should understand how it will need to be built, and analyze all of your capital and human assets. Here are some questions you should answer before making the final decision:

1. What are your goals? How will your company gain from having its own private cloud?Is there a clear business case for developing a private cloud?
2. Would the new infrastructure deliver the efficiency your company will expect?
3. Do you have the infrastructure needed to develop a private cloud? If not, what is the level of capital costs needed?
4. How much virtualization have you completed, how much experience does your IT staff have in maintaining a private cloud?
5. Have the levels of security that would be needed to manage a private cloud been fully assessed?

It is mandatory to define the rules that govern how the private cloud will be accessed, understanding resources for how the cloud will be development and maintained within your organization. Switching from a public infrastructure to a private one without proper planning leads to increased downtime, lower customer satisfaction, and delays in product release schedules. Ask yourself how much time, money and commitment your business has to invest in enabling the private cloud before building your own private cloud environment.