Private Cloud: Top 10 facts tech management leaders should know

Cloud is an essential component of every enterprise tech management strategy, but sifting through market noise to design a robust cloud strategy isn’t easy. Despite reported high private cloud adoption, Forrester Research said it continues to see enterprises struggle with their private cloud build-out.

“Success with a private cloud comes only through embracing the true cloud model of self-service, full automation, and business and developer agility. But most technology managers lack enough hands-on experience with public clouds to truly understand the end user experience priorities and how to translate them to their own environments,” said Lauren E. Nelson, analyst at Forrester. “Their focus is less on developer enablement and cloud-specific values and more on optimising IT efficiency against tech management metrics. The result is developer rejection.”

Forrester recommends that all tech management leaders familiarise their teams with the following 10 private cloud facts to help set expectations and focus their team’s efforts to maximise private cloud value:

Cloudwashing is rampant, and you’re probably doing it too
Just because an environment carries the cloud label doesn’t mean it actually delivers cloud value. A majority of enterprises that claim private cloud adoption don’t have a private cloud but rather an enhanced virtualisation environment that uses private cloud software for tech management efficiency practices.

For some, enhanced virtualisation is the first stage of the cloud journey and getting to a true cloud environment sits just outside of stage. For others, enhanced virtualisation is the cloud journey, and they have no intention of applying cloud specific capabilities. For these clients, the private cloud initiative is centered on resource efficiency and optimisation, not fast access to resources. The private cloud software portal serves as a tool to improve tech management of virtual machines, not as a means for end users to deploy resources directly. It isn’t a cloud, but there’s still value in this approach.
Private cloud labels are applied to a range of environments

Forrester sees an emergence of four private cloud approaches that are being driven by very different strategies and thus have variant scope and outcomes. Each strategy reflects different priorities, budgets, sizes, keys to success, vendor selection criteria, and challenges.

Enhanced virtualisation drives the first approach, which targets management and provisioning time improvements for existing virtual environments. The second approach focuses on test/dev functions and on deterring unauthorised public cloud use and providing fast access to internal resources. The third strategy is led by the business to deliver a public-cloud-like service internally but is not limited to test/dev uses. The fourth approach involves a transformational effort, aimed at widespread change within the tech management organisation for process improvement, business/tech management alignment, or creating/ enhancing tech management services that directly tie to revenue generation.

Operational efficiency is good, but developer enablement is better
A large focus for tech management investment over the past 10 years has been improving tech management’s operational efficiency, but today’s leading enterprises have shifted their engagement focus onto the business to help differentiate themselves from their competition by leveraging new technologies. This transition takes the focus away from infrastructure and tech operations tasks and places the focus higher up the stack, on application agility. New innovative deliverables from product and marketing groups can benefit greatly from a tech management team that is newtechnology-forward in its thinking and training.

Transformational hybrid cloud strategies move slowly
Fixing the old and aligning the new isn’t easy - and doing both at the same time can be a long and arduous process. Can developers wait that long?

Moving your entire application portfolio into a capacity-, cost-, and performance-optimised hybrid cloud isn’t a project that will happen within a year. Many enterprises focus their early efforts on optimisation of systems of record before spanning out to include newer applications and providing autonomy and agility to developers. This approach is partially due to the burden of internal process and policy discussions and a lack of trust in developers to stay within corporate standards and desired levels of efficiency. With this approach, it could be years before I&O is viewed as a partner to development or the business in their efforts to drive customer innovations.

Top time-intensive steps: Integration and the road to process automation
It’s not net-new resources that slow private cloud adoption but connecting these environments to your legacy systems of record, operational processes, and help desk systems that slow it all down.

One environment does not fit all workloads
Enterprises are no longer asking whether they should leverage public or private cloud as an all-or-nothing proposition. Instead, enterprises are asking when they should leverage public versus private cloud on an application/workload level where specific application characteristics align to certain deployment models.

Cloud economics is tied to public cloud, not private
The promise of cloud-related cost savings is dependent on specific use cases and is largely connected to public cloud, not private. Achieving cloud economics within a private cloud environment requires a large, diverse usage base, highly standardised costs, a pervasive chargeback system, and aggressive capacity planning and consolidation practices.

Private cloud ROI is a struggle without tracking employee efficiency
Achieving ROI with a private cloud isn’t straightforward and should not be your primary justification for the effort. There are countless published case studies that boast significant private cloud hard cost savings. The greater potential value lies with the full automation of resource provisioning to provide greater enterprise agility.

Private cloud must start with org structure change and effective incentives
Automation, outsourcing, and cloud are all threatening changes to your infrastructure, operations, and security teams. Designing and implementing incentives that reward change while showing a promising career path is essential for a successful private cloud strategy.

PaaS or IaaS?
The reality is that you probably need a blend of both, and looking at the public clouds as a proof point, IaaS and PaaS are blending. Today, these layers continue to merge, especially as service providers look to provide multiple levels for developers to access their services.