New Study Reveals the Benefits and Challenges of Private Cloud

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A new study sponsored by Microsoft explored whether organizations have a solid understanding of private cloud and to what degree they are adopting and benefiting from the technology. The Private Cloud in Context survey found that about 56% of respondents have a solid understanding of private cloud, and almost 60% feel that private cloud will play an important role in their organization.

The survey of 570 IT professionals was conducted by Freeform Dynamics for The Register. It defined private cloud as:

“The basic idea of Private Cloud is to pool a bunch of servers and other resources (storage and networking) to create a general purpose platform upon which a variety of workload types can be run simultaneously. An important attribute of private cloud is the rapid allocation/de-allocation of resources to/from workloads, enabling a more dynamic approach to management.”

Based on the above definition, the survey also revealed that:

• Private cloud adoption is strong. Approximately 28% of the respondents are using private cloud, while another 27% are “doing private cloud-like things”. Approximately 22% of the respondents are likely to adopt private cloud in the future.
• The more servers an organization has, the more likely it is to adopt private cloud. More than 70% of respondents with over 5,000 servers have adopted private cloud services, compared to approximately 40% of respondents with fewer than five servers.
• The biggest benefits of private cloud relate to service level enhancements and the reduction of costs and overhead. When it comes to service level enhancements, almost 80% of respondents cited the following as huge or worthwhile benefits:
• Rapid provisioning of infrastructure resources for new applications, speeding up rollout and time to benefit
• Rapid response to changing demands, allowing additional resources to be given to an app, or reclaimed from it, quickly and efficiently

As for cost savings, about 70% of respondents cited “Less need to over-provision resources, driving overall improvements in resource utilization within the IT infrastructure” as a worthwhile or huge benefit.

• Private cloud has a number of challenges. More than 80% of respondents are concerned about application and compatibility issues, as well as the lack of relevant industry standards. Many organizations also have a hard time making a business case for private cloud, as the messages that they receive from vendors are confusing and contradictory.

For more information, click here to download the complete survey.