Original article by Ronald Schmelzer
...[W]e're now starting to see the emergence of a more perplexing concept called "private clouds." If the benefit of the cloud is primarily loosely coupled, location-independent virtualized services (implemented in a service-oriented manner, of course), and we're doing this with the intent of reducing IT expenditures, then is there any value in a new concept called private clouds? How does the addition of this word "private" add any value to the sort of service-oriented cloud computing that we've been now talking about for a handful of years? Is this a valuable term, or mere marketing spin?
To attempt to gain some clarity around this issue, ZapThink reached out to a number of pundits and opinion-leaders in the space to get their thoughts and definitions on private cloud, and to no surprise, the definitions all varied significantly. Let's explore these definitions and see what additional value (if any) they contribute to the cloud computing discussion.
Private cloud concept #1: Company-owned and operated, location-independent, virtualized (homogeneous) service infrastructure
My colleague, Jason Bloomberg, is of the opinion that a private cloud consists of infrastructure owned by a company to deploy services in a virtualized, location-independent manner. What differentiates private clouds from simply implementing clustered applications or servers, is that the cloud is not built for a specific service or application in mind.
Rather, it is an abstracted, virtualized environment that allows for deployment of a wide range of disparate services. It is important to note that in practical terms, companies will most likely not implement this vision of private clouds using a diversity of heterogeneous infrastructure. Indeed, it is in their best interests to control costs and complexity of support, training, and administration by implementing their private clouds using a single vendor stack.
So, this vision of private clouds is often a single-vendor (homogeneous) cluster of virtualized infrastructure that enables location-independent service consumption. Of course, implementing any sort of homogeneous stack reduces the need for loosely-coupled services, and thus weakens the service-oriented cloud computing value proposition as a whole for that company.
Private cloud concept #2: Virtualization plus dynamic provisioning (elasticity)
In a response to a Facebook post, Jean-Jacques Dubray comments that the above definition doesn't go far enough. Rather, in order for the company-owned and implemented infrastructure to be considered a private cloud, it must include the concept of "elasticity." Specifically, this means that the hardware and software resources must be provisioned in a dynamic manner, scaling up and down to meet changes in demand, thus enabling a more responsive and cost-sensitive approach to IT provisioning.
This idea of private clouds sounds a lot like the utility computing concept sold as part of IBM's decade-old vision of on-demand computing. From this perspective, a private cloud is company-owned on-demand utility computing implemented with services instead of tightly coupled applications.
Private cloud concept #3: Governed, virtualized, location-independent services
In a response my Tweet on the subject, David Chappell comments that the private cloud is really a response to some of the security and governance issues raised by the (public) cloud. Specifically, he states that a "private cloud (equals) more control over what and how."
Reading between the 140 character lines, I can guess that his perspective is that a private cloud is a governed cloud that enables virtualized, governed, location-independent services. For sure, there has been a lot of consternation over the fact that the most popular "public" clouds share infrastructure between customers and require that data and communications cross the company firewall.
This stresses out a lot of IT administrators and managers. So in response, these folks insist that they want all the technological benefits of cloud computing, but without the governance risk of having it reside in someone else's infrastructure. Basically, they want the virtualization, loose coupling, and location-independent benefits of cloud computing without the economic benefits of leveraging someone else's costs and investments. Basically, they would rather own a version of the Amazon EC2 than use it, solely for reasons of governance.
Many people are indeed concerned about those supposed governance and security draw-backs of cloud computing. However, rather than simply dismissing the economic benefits of the public clouds, why can't we simply approach private clouds as a veneer that we place on top of the public clouds?
Could't companies impose their governance and security requirements on third-party infrastructure, using company-owned governance tools and approaches to manage remote services? Couldn't we simply demand that the public clouds provide greater governance and security control?
Basically, does the addition of the term private provide the same sort of value as it does in the context of the virtual private network (VPN)? We didn't throw out the Internet because it was insecure and create a private Internet. So, why should we do the same with cloud computing and create private clouds?
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...[W]e're now starting to see the emergence of a more perplexing concept called "private clouds." If the benefit of the cloud is primarily loosely coupled, location-independent virtualized services (implemented in a service-oriented manner, of course), and we're doing this with the intent of reducing IT expenditures, then is there any value in a new concept called private clouds? How does the addition of this word "private" add any value to the sort of service-oriented cloud computing that we've been now talking about for a handful of years? Is this a valuable term, or mere marketing spin?
To attempt to gain some clarity around this issue, ZapThink reached out to a number of pundits and opinion-leaders in the space to get their thoughts and definitions on private cloud, and to no surprise, the definitions all varied significantly. Let's explore these definitions and see what additional value (if any) they contribute to the cloud computing discussion.
Private cloud concept #1: Company-owned and operated, location-independent, virtualized (homogeneous) service infrastructure
My colleague, Jason Bloomberg, is of the opinion that a private cloud consists of infrastructure owned by a company to deploy services in a virtualized, location-independent manner. What differentiates private clouds from simply implementing clustered applications or servers, is that the cloud is not built for a specific service or application in mind.
Rather, it is an abstracted, virtualized environment that allows for deployment of a wide range of disparate services. It is important to note that in practical terms, companies will most likely not implement this vision of private clouds using a diversity of heterogeneous infrastructure. Indeed, it is in their best interests to control costs and complexity of support, training, and administration by implementing their private clouds using a single vendor stack.
So, this vision of private clouds is often a single-vendor (homogeneous) cluster of virtualized infrastructure that enables location-independent service consumption. Of course, implementing any sort of homogeneous stack reduces the need for loosely-coupled services, and thus weakens the service-oriented cloud computing value proposition as a whole for that company.
Private cloud concept #2: Virtualization plus dynamic provisioning (elasticity)
In a response to a Facebook post, Jean-Jacques Dubray comments that the above definition doesn't go far enough. Rather, in order for the company-owned and implemented infrastructure to be considered a private cloud, it must include the concept of "elasticity." Specifically, this means that the hardware and software resources must be provisioned in a dynamic manner, scaling up and down to meet changes in demand, thus enabling a more responsive and cost-sensitive approach to IT provisioning.
This idea of private clouds sounds a lot like the utility computing concept sold as part of IBM's decade-old vision of on-demand computing. From this perspective, a private cloud is company-owned on-demand utility computing implemented with services instead of tightly coupled applications.
Private cloud concept #3: Governed, virtualized, location-independent services
In a response my Tweet on the subject, David Chappell comments that the private cloud is really a response to some of the security and governance issues raised by the (public) cloud. Specifically, he states that a "private cloud (equals) more control over what and how."
Reading between the 140 character lines, I can guess that his perspective is that a private cloud is a governed cloud that enables virtualized, governed, location-independent services. For sure, there has been a lot of consternation over the fact that the most popular "public" clouds share infrastructure between customers and require that data and communications cross the company firewall.
This stresses out a lot of IT administrators and managers. So in response, these folks insist that they want all the technological benefits of cloud computing, but without the governance risk of having it reside in someone else's infrastructure. Basically, they want the virtualization, loose coupling, and location-independent benefits of cloud computing without the economic benefits of leveraging someone else's costs and investments. Basically, they would rather own a version of the Amazon EC2 than use it, solely for reasons of governance.
Many people are indeed concerned about those supposed governance and security draw-backs of cloud computing. However, rather than simply dismissing the economic benefits of the public clouds, why can't we simply approach private clouds as a veneer that we place on top of the public clouds?
Could't companies impose their governance and security requirements on third-party infrastructure, using company-owned governance tools and approaches to manage remote services? Couldn't we simply demand that the public clouds provide greater governance and security control?
Basically, does the addition of the term private provide the same sort of value as it does in the context of the virtual private network (VPN)? We didn't throw out the Internet because it was insecure and create a private Internet. So, why should we do the same with cloud computing and create private clouds?
Read the full article
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