The decision has been made to move to private cloud. All reasons for or against have been heard, and now it’s time to implement. With this in mind, what options are available for doing so, and how do they affect the design of an organization’s IT?
Private clouds come in flavors, and while each vendor will tell you that their specific flavor is very clearly distinct from the next, it’s more accurate to think of them a bit like sports drinks. Nobody’s entirely sure what flavor “blue” is supposed to be, but “blue” from one vendor tastes more or less like “blue” from another vendor.
The nitty-gritty technical differences do matter, but not as much as the broad categories into which the various private clouds can be lumped: you have to pick what color suits you before worrying over who does that color best.
Spectrum of Choice
The four broad categories of private cloud are:
- Extreme Do It Yourself (DIY), usually with open source
- Guided DIY, where one combines multiple products from a single vendor to build a cloud solution
- A fully-managed Private-Cloud-as-a-Service
- Cloud platforms, which are sold as a single product, but owned by the customer
