Successful Public Cloud Starts With Private Cloud

A new survey by Pluribus Networks highlights the importance of building private clouds as a precursor to effectively utilizing public cloud services.

The company surveyed 134 IT technical professionals and business decision makers attending VMworld 2016 U.S., and found that public and private clouds tied as the leading technologies that will impact their companies the most in the future. The survey also found that while most IT professionals are researching, piloting or deploying a number of new technologies, less than 15 percent believe their IT department is well equipped to meet the needs of businesses today.

Mark Harris, Pluribus’ vice president of marketing, tells Channel Partners that the channel should be looking to add “solutions to their line card that create agile networks with visibility as a key attribute.”

“Just supplying backward-looking networks as they have for the past 10 years is a losing battle as the market shifts to building private clouds,” he said. “Partners that simply supply older technologies may garner short-terms sales, but they are missing the bigger and longer-term opportunity of positioning themselves for the transformed IT function. Some other partners jump on that opening quickly to become the end-user’s trusted adviser for everything they need going forward. Every enterprise that has in-house IT resources will transform those resources into a private cloud … some faster than others. The faster their clients transform to private clouds, the more competitive their clients will be.”

Private clouds are a necessary starting point to allow organizations to take advantage of public clouds, Harris said. Partners that jump on this transformation will position themselves for long-term and strategic success, he said.{ad}

When it comes to the technologies that IT professionals think will most impact their company over the next three years, public clouds and private clouds (software-defined infrastructure) are the clear leaders (each at 43 percent). Virtual desktop infrastructure (41 percent) and converged infrastructure (30 percent) trailed behind, according to the survey.

When looking at the top nine new technologies in the IT space – server virtualization, cloud services, containers, software-defined networking, mobile/tablet computing, converged infrastructure, virtual desktop infrastructure, and big data and Hadoop – in practically every one, more than half of IT professionals said they are either deploying the new technology or actively researching it. This means the majority of organizations are …

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… considering, piloting or deploying a wide range of the newest IT technologies, according to the survey.

In addition, three times as many respondents claim that the network is a strategic investment, as opposed to a tactical one. While the network is clearly important to individuals, many feel it is more of a long-term investment than one that there is a tactical need for today.{ad}

“The transformation opens up significant new opportunities for those channel partners that listen and understand their clients’ transformation goals and the technologies that can power those transformations,” Harris said. “Most enterprises are short on the knowledge of how to go about building agile networks with visibility. Those same enterprises are looking for actual roll-your-sleeves-up expertise of how to start and execute this journey. Partners that embrace this changing face of IT, articulate the value it brings, and offer their clients’ leadership and a well-conceived assistance to make the transition, will be rewarded for their first-mover mentality. Partners need to be not just aware of the litany of new private-cloud-enabling solutions, but take a position with respect to which ones are most suitable for various requirements.”