Defining Private Cloud Delivery

**Editor’s Note: This article is an excerpt from the Digital Issue, “

Profiting From Private Cloud Services

,” which is available for download from

Channel Partners Cloud Insights .**

By Carl Meadows

Many channel partners see cloud solutions as a threat to their hardware sales, but in the case of private clouds, they can be a boon. Whether an enterprise establishes its own private cloud or retains a private cloud hosting provider, the partner can still sell the cloud hardware and, with the latter, the partner also can resell cloud hosting services.

Indeed, channel partners should be happy if their customers use either a combination of cloud and traditional solutions a hybrid environment. Why? Because all signals point to a huge increase in spending for private cloud computing by businesses and organizations over the next few years.

Let’s make sure we’re on the same wavelength. First, many organizations use the “public” cloud computing model, often for test and development purposes. A service provider furnishes the compute, storage, hardware and bandwidth costs to many customers and the customer manages and provisions services on their own. It’s easy and inexpensive to set up and a company pays for what it uses so no resources are wasted. Amazon Web Services, IBM’s Blue Cloud, Good AppEngine and Windows Azure Services Platform are all examples of public clouds.

Private cloud computing typically is used to run applications in production. Unlike public clouds, private clouds are proprietary networks or data centers managed by the organization it services or by a third party. So the hardware, compute, data storage and network can assure high levels of availability and security that can’t be accessed by other clients if they’re in the same data center.

A business can manage its own private cloud but use a third-party data facility to store its servers and other hardware, relying on the data center to supply power and security. But a business also can retain a managed private cloud hosting provider that will provide a turnkey solution from space and power to the dedicated (or in some cases virtual private) cloud computing infrastructure.

Large enterprises may find it feasible even cost-effective to build and manage their own private cloud; they possess the money, resources and time to do that. But small and medium businesses typically don’t have those resources nor do they necessarily want to manage their private cloud. Many take a similar view as most car owners: “I don’t fix my own car because I don’t have the expertise or time, and I just don’t want to.” These businesses figure their IT professionals can focus on their strategic initiatives and leave the day-to-day managing to the private cloud hosting provider.

While public clouds are catching on as development platforms for the enterprise, IT professionals remain wary of public clouds. According to the ISACA’s 2012 IT Risk/Reward Barometer, 69 percent believe the risk of using public clouds outweighs the benefit. As for private clouds, the global IT association’s survey found 57 percent of IT professionals believe the benefit outweighs the risk. Among those using the cloud for mission-critical services, the gap is 25 points in favor of private cloud (34 percent vs. 9 percent), the ISACA survey found.

Hosted private cloud a dedicated (or virtual private) environment that is internally designed, externally hosted and externally managed has become increasingly popular. International Data Corp. (IDC) predicts that worldwide spending on hosted private cloud services will jump by a compound annual growth rate of more than 50 percent over the 2012-2016 forecast period, to $24 billion.

Researchers at Forrester note that hosted private cloud combines the agility, expertise and shifted infrastructure responsibility of the public cloud with the privacy and customized configuration of the private cloud. Forrester concludes that from a strategic perspective, hosted private cloud services shift an organization toward increased outsourcing and better position the enterprise for more advanced hybrid IT scenarios.

If a hybrid environment is developed, it also will require the assistance of channel partners. For instance, if a dedicated server is required to run a high-speed application, that hardware can integrate into a private cloud. This hybridizes the system between virtual servers and dedicated servers, something that can’t be achieved in a public cloud.

Undoubtedly, channel partners will identify countless business opportunities ahead in the private cloud whether enterprises manage their own environment or they use a private cloud hosting provider.

Carl Meadows is the senior director of cloud services product management at

SunGard Availability Services

, an IT service provider specializing in disaster recovery, managed IT, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software. Meadows is responsible for the development and delivery of SunGard’s global platforms and managed services for the cloud. Previously, he held a senior product management role at both The Planet Internet Services (now Softlayer) and Symantec.


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