Will VMware Own the Private Cloud in 2012?
January 19, 2012
In 2011, many data center managers took a hard look at the public cloud and said, “No, thank you.” The drawbacks of public cloud computing outweigh the cost benefits that are initially attractive to so many companies, particularly small to midsize businesses. While there are homegrown public cloud applications being built upon open source options like Xen Hypervisor and Kernel-based virtual machines (KVM), the public cloud remains basically a science experiment in the eyes of corporate data centers. So, the move to the cloud in the coming year will be a private or hybrid one. Will VMware own that space? Based on trends that began in the past year, the answer to this question is also, “no.”…
Public Versus Private Cloud Adoption
The public cloud path, at first glance, delivers everything the SMB needs. It’s pre-built, low-maintenance and affordable. Some of the fine print, however, has kept data centers from embracing this option fully. The primary cause for concern in the public cloud has to do with adequate uptime and service level agreements (SLAs) that fail to satisfy end-user needs for mission-critical applications. To guarantee a 99.999 percent uptime, a public cloud user essentially needs a complete system failover option, which erases any savings it might get from opting for a public cloud approach. Other challenges in the public cloud arena stem from security concerns and response time under load.
That leaves private clouds as the preferred path for most businesses. But is this viable for most data centers? This time, the answer to the question is, “yes.” If we look back at the early days of virtualization as a lesson for how private clouds will evolve, we remember that back then, everyone could list the benefits of virtualization, but few foresaw the need for virtualization management solutions that could unearth the technology’s benefits. The shops that cured the plague of virtual machine (VM) sprawl were the ones who invested in the additional technology necessary to help them manage their virtualization assets.