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OUR PRIVATE CLOUD STRATEGY SHOULD ACCOMMODATE AN UNPREDICTABLE FUTURE

As an organization, we face a daunting challenge: how can we reap the rewards of private cloud while mitigating the risks? When does private cloud make sense?

1. Why choose private over public cloud 1. Why choose private over public cloud? • To save money • To maintain control over our data • To innovate Why choose private over public cloud? Why would anyone choose to build a private cloud, when public cloud options abound? Private cloud entails more effort, significant CapEx, and the threat of both financial and career risk if we make the wrong choices. There are three primary reasons why building a private cloud might be right for us. Reason 1: To save money. If the workload we’ve earmarked for the cloud is static and predictable, it should be more cost-effective to run in a private cloud. That’s because with a static workload, we’ll never need to spin up servers for unpredictable bursts of data or activity, and we won’t need the ability to downsize during quiet periods—both of which are primary drivers for choosing public cloud. So, for highly predictable workloads, private cloud makes much more sense than public from a financial standpoint.   Reason 2: To maintain control over our data. If we have regulatory compliance requirements or our internal IT team has reasons to be reluctant to move data to public cloud, know that with a private cloud we keep all our data on premises. That means we’ll often retain better control over data security in a private cloud than in a public one. Reason 3: To innovate. If our organization believes that it has an exciting new way to build cloud infrastructure—a way that will help you gain an advantage over competitors through infrastructure—that’s a reason to build our own private cloud. What if we can use an FPGA or some new hardware to boost performance for a specific task? What if specialized hardware makes sense for our workload? Then a private cloud offers opportunity.

2. Assess the real risks • We can’t eliminate risk, but we can mitigate it We’re in that scary period when businesses will face dead ends and make bad decisions before they start to see their way forward. We can’t eliminate risk, but we can mitigate it. The one thing we can be sure of is that things will change. That's especially true for the early generations of private cloud products being sold today. Our number one rule for mitigating risk? Stay flexible and make sure that the infrastructure technologies that surround our applications are modular, API-driven, and cloud-neutral. That way, we'll be able to pick them up and move them to a different cloud environment—private or public—at will, while guaranteeing that our app delivery systems will continue to work.

3. Ask before you invest: • How well do their products integrate with our stack? • Are they truly API-accessible? • Are they adaptable? • What’s the time to value? • Do they have a history of actually working? Here’s a list of essential questions to ask infrastructure vendors: How well do their products integrate with our stack? Do they play well with others? Look for something as close to plug and play as possible. Are they truly API-accessible? Everyone claims their products have APIs, but do those APIs actually control the products and provide you what we need? Are they adaptable? Will they flex and adapt? If we decide to move to a different cloud environment—public or private—will our application delivery mechanisms still work? What’s the time to value? Will you reap the value of the investment within the next two to three years? Do they have a history of actually working? We need to do our due diligence to ensure that their products have been successfully deployed at other organizations.  

4. Stay agile and flexible • Avoid technical debt It’s early in the journey to private cloud. We’ll be pioneers, and that’s often an uncomfortable position. That means that when we're building a private cloud, we need to stay agile and avoid new technical debt. It will only slow us down. Base your infrastructure investments on products that have proven their value in the sense that they have already worked for other businesses in the past and will give us pathways to keep moving forward in the future. That will keep us ahead of the competition.

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