Although there are numerous companies providing cloud computing solutions, the number of enterprise companies deciding to use the cloud model for their mission-critical applications are few and far between.
The reason for this slow adoption is that the risks associated with handing over full control of both the application and its associated data to an external service provider are considered to be just too high for some companies to take.
Justin Coetsee, software architect at IBM SA, explains that one solution to this dilemma is leveraging the technology that underlies cloud computing and recreating that environment inside the enterprise. “This allows companies to have the same level of granular provisioning and anywhere access to applications that cloud computing provides, while allowing the organisation to retain the same level of control that it is used to.”
Willie Oosthuysen, CTO for the emerging central region at Cisco, adds that this strategy is one that could be used to solve the issues surrounding cloud computing, and that some companies are already looking to bring services that have been moved into a cloud computing model back into the corporate IT infrastructure.
He adds that this 'private cloud' could be the answer to many of the issues that are keeping companies from adopting cloud computing as a model.
This allows companies to have the same level of granular provisioning and anywhere access.
Justin Coetsee, software architect, IBM SA
The decision to adopt a private model for cloud computing does, however, create its own problems. Because the organisations concerned will be responsible for all the infrastructure supporting the applications, they will not only carry the cost of that infrastructure, but will lose out on access to the massed computing infrastructure that service providers will have invested in, in order to deliver public cloud computing solutions.
Coetsee explains that there are efforts under way to allow private systems to interact with public computing infrastructure so that, should they reach the limits of their computing power, they would be able to hand off some of the processing to external systems. This would answer one of the biggest criticisms of the private cloud model.
Utilisation
The biggest benefits of adopting a cloud model internally to an organisation remain the ability to increase application availability and, more importantly, to increase server availability, something that has troubled organisations.
“Your average industry standard server only runs at about 10% utilisation,” says Coetsee. “By creating an internal cloud computing environment, this can be driven up to almost 85%.”
Coetsee says even if companies do buy into the delivery mechanism offered by the technology underlying cloud computing, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to convince business managers that sharing resources is the correct path to take.
Once the battle to deploy the technology has been won, IT departments can then use the additional management capabilities to get a clearer picture of which departments are using which resources with a view to implementing usage-based billing systems in the future.
Whether or not this 'private cloud' constitutes true cloud computing, it is clear that it will not provide the same level of flexibility that a pure, Internet-based service will. For companies contemplating either route, the delicate balance of risk versus flexibility will be one that will remain top of mind.
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