Private Clouds: hot favorites for enterprises

With enterprise IT organizations trying to leverage maximum efficiency with cost savings, adoption of cloud computing - both private and public turns out to be the latest fad in its deployment of resources. Private clouds are adopted at widespread and accelerating rates than it was suggested by the previous researches, says a survey by Novell. 

Companies are particular about simplifying management across their integrated physical, virtual and cloud environments but with cloud computing in focus, whether they can attain it with minimal risk is a point to ponder. 77 percent of the large enterprises organizations use some form of cloud computing today, much higher than previously suggested. 89 percent of respondents in these organizations believe private clouds are the next step to the already implementing virtualization while 43 percent are planning to use a combined approach of private and public cloud computing. 31 percent find that a key benefit to private cloud computing is the ability to manage a heterogeneous infrastructure. 87 percent believe that public cloud computing will naturally take its course over company owned data centers and 92 percent think of it as an alternative to the current IT platforms.

Private cloud computing earns the advantage over public cloud computing when it comes to the matter of security concern. 91 percent are concerned about security issues in the public cloud, with 50 percent indicating security as the primary barrier to implementation whereas 86 percent believe data is more secure in a private cloud. Private cloud computing provides freedom from maintaining hardware, lower cost upkeep, resource scalability, lower initial costs. 76 percent showed more confidence in internal IT departments for providing data security than outside vendors.

"The survey results are telling," said Jim Ebzery, senior vice president and general manager of Security, Management and Operating Platforms at Novell. "The path to public cloud computing needs to begin with the private cloud, learning to leverage the public cloud within the safety of the enterprise network. Despite these concerns, enterprises are moving forward with cloud computing -- whether in a private cloud, public cloud or in a hybrid cloud environment".