Enterprises may be ramping up investment in hybrid cloud storage, seeking to combine the control of private solutions with scalable public resources. However, private cloud deployments will remain critical to operations, as businesses continue to rely on open source technologies that enable them to cut costs, integrate different environments and keep data secure.
A Gartner report from October found that approximately half of enterprises would have hybrid clouds by 2017. Security concerns about public cloud environments may be waning, but the change will not obviate private cloud deployments. On the contrary, private solutions will be more critical than ever to delivering specific services and optimizing cloud infrastructure.
“Vendors are promoting private cloud computing as ‘the next thing’ for infrastructure and operations – and it is, but only for the right services,” stated Gartner analyst Thomas Bittman. “While the majority of midsize and large enterprises will build and deploy private cloud services over the next few years, private cloud will only be used for specific, appropriate services.”
The study also highlighted the opportunities that vendors have to address shortcomings in current private cloud technology. Some enterprises still perform extensive custom work on their solutions, but providers are stepping to the plate with easy-to-deploy solutions.
More specifically, businesses that utilize OpenStack are increasingly turning to private clouds over public ones. Talkin’ Cloud’s Chris Talbot commented on a survey of 822 people, conducted by the OpenStack Foundation, that found a clear preference for private infrastructure.
The results also revealed that companies had taken up OpenStack clouds in order to avoid vendor lock-in, reduce costs and improve operational efficiency. IT companies constituted 63 percent of respondents, but there was interest in OpenStack from a wide range of verticals including telecommunications, manufacturing and government.
