Ready for Private Cloud? How about Public Clouds?

Your organization has been using virtualization for a while and is ready to push the envelope on automation, efficiency, and user accounting by embarking on policy based management of applications in a private cloud including automated provisioning of resources through self-service. Great! However, you need to think about current and future industry trends on which applications might migrate to private vs public clouds. For example, best candidate applications for cloud model:

• Have high volume of transactions due to high user demand
  
• Use resources that can be provisioned in an automated manner
  
• Are easy to monitor and track when it comes to usage and user accounting
  

Data security and privacy can be big factors that helps determine whether an application stays in private or public clouds. However, if an application with all the above characteristics listed and does not use sensitive data is put in a private cloud, you may end up moving it to public cloud when the industry starts moving and you may have spent more money in the process migrating from non-cloud to private cloud and then to a public cloud. It might be more beneficial to assess suitability of applications for public clouds before deciding to keep them in private clouds. It is quite possible that 3rd parties that support multiple companies using public clouds may develop better cost efficiency and service levels than internal IT groups if they can achieve economy of scale faster than internal IT. The trick is to ensure that:

• Data security and privacy will not be issues
  
• Public cloud offers significant cost savings compared to a private cloud model
  
• Service levels are not likely to deteriorate even volume is scaled up and when the 3rd party signs up more customers for their public cloud
  

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