What are the benefits of private cloud computing for businesses?
A private cloud computing platform is a stack of network, server, and storage hardware dedicated to you for the purpose of cloud computing. When using a managed cloud computing service, the hardware stack becomes a customizable cloud of compute and storage resources that can be configured and reconfigured whenever and however you want. Why is this ability to configure and reconfigure your server resources with a private cloud computing platform so valuable? This is why.
With a typical dedicated server stack, managed by you or outsourced, you select your server, storage and networking needs, purchase them, and then live with those configuration for 3-5 years. Over the course of those years, you may be adding memory, which is not too difficult. You may need to upgrade your disk drives, which is a bit more difficult. Over time, you may need to upgrade the CPU, which is very difficult and expensive because it essentially requires changing the entire server.
When speaking with finance professionals, the following analogy can be used to describe the benefit of private cloud computing:
Imagine that you are responsible for bus transportation in a metropolitan area. He is preparing to order new buses that his community would need to live with for the next 7 years. The buses are available in 20, 30 or 50 seat configurations. You need 1,000-1,100 seats in total to suit your population and the routes you have designed to suit your needs. Each line is designed to maximize the use of a 20- or 50-seat bus. So you guess and buy twenty 20-seat buses and twelve 50-seat buses, and then you expect it to be efficient for the next 7 years.
Interesting puzzle, huh? Even if it is done really well, at the end of the day, there is still a lot of room for inefficiencies and wasted resources.
Rather than being forced to live with the same resource configuration for several years, imagine that you could buy a “cloud with 1000 bus seats” and reconfigure those seats at will on buses of the size you want, at any time. Buses can be as small as a single seat or you can have a 1,000 seat bus. Do you have a convention? Run 4 x 200 seat buses between the hotels and the conference center. Having this flexibility is really powerful and valuable. Why? Because with the increased flexibility you can have more seats in use at any one time, thus requiring significantly fewer seats and providing a better experience.
That could be called “cloud transportation”, and it would be the dream of every transportation official. Now think of each bus as a server and you have “private cloud computing” – every IT finance manager’s dream come true.
An important new requirement
We just saw the power of flexibility that private cloud computing brings. Unfortunately, it introduces a level of complexity that was not present before. There are some unique skills that must exist to truly reap the benefits of a private cloud.
Continuing the transportation analogy … you now have this new on-demand flexibility for your buses. All you need now is a team of people controlling the flow of traffic and redesigning buses with more or fewer seats based on demand and utilization. They would work feverishly to reduce waiting and route times for anyone who wanted a seat on any bus. Flexibility is powerful, but to take full advantage of it, you need quite sophisticated and complex (that is, expensive) skills to dynamically change your settings and get the full benefit of flexibility.
In the computing world, what you need to do is keep an eye on your server, storage, and network resources. When one seems to be causing a bottleneck, give them more resources. You must also remember to reduce the amount of resources allocated to a server that does not need them. If you don’t, it remains idle and is not available to another server that may require it. This resource allocation process is powerful, but not economical.
That’s where you need to pay attention when designing your private cloud. You need it to automatically change cloud settings in real time so resources are where they need to be when they need to be there! In the blink of an eye and automatically, you should shut down cloud servers that are not in use and turn them back on when needed. This means that an extremely smart little piece of software will have to constantly monitor your server, storage, memory, and network resources and compare them to workloads. Then it will estimate and forecast which servers need the most resources. After estimating, you should automatically reallocate resources, in real time, so you’re always using your cloud computing resources in the most efficient way. How cool is that? The dream continues …
cost
The beautiful ending to this story is that the final savings from idle capacity can be transferred to you. The cost of a well-designed private cloud computing platform is less than a dedicated server per server! So not only is it more flexible and can offer a lower total cost of ownership, a managed private cloud can be absolutely cheaper. That is the benefit of private cloud computing.