Published on June 08, 2010

Private Clouds: An Increasingly Popular Option

Perennial concerns regarding outsourcing information technology services to the cloud include security and availability. For companies that rely on their IT services as an integral part of their businesses, trusting someone else to meet their needs in this area can be very difficult. Nevertheless, the cloud has certain advantages that companies looking to cut costs (especially initial capital investments, such as those required when constructing a traditional data center) may find attractive. Increasingly, companies are turning to private clouds as alternatives to the public cloud that still exploit the advantages of cloud-based computing.

Private clouds are an attempt to take advantage of the cloud-computing-based model while still maintaining control over resources, rather than simply trusting another company to provide adequate service and security. According to an article entitled "Private Cloud Computing Takes Off in Companies Not Keen on Sharing," the move from distributed computing resources (in the form of desktop computers) to private cloud-based resources allows companies to, for instance, buy fewer copies of a particular software package. Rather than purchasing "10,000 copies of a software program, only to see 95% of them go unused on any given day...the company buys 500 copies of the program, which get used every day, all the time." Such benefits, along with the ability to maintain control of the resources, make private clouds an appealing option.

To read further, please visit the Data Center Journal website:
http://datacenterjournal.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3642:jeff-clark&catid=25&Itemid=100126