Organizations that look at private cloud applications frequently get driven in that direction by security needs. By internalizing a cloud, the organization keeps its information on its own premises and out of anyone else’s hands. This is only one of the many benefits of a private cloud installation, though. Some of the other benefits include these:
- Private clouds are appropriate for organizations that are subject to compliance regimes with stringent standards for data security and privacy. For some organizations, even storing encrypted data in the cloud poses too much of a security risk.
- An internal cloud can provide better performance than public clouds. Since private cloud data doesn’t need to transit the public Internet or a tunnel inside of it, the organization has more ability to manage its network traffic and optimize data flows.
- Some legacy applications are impossible or impractical to transition to public cloud services. Running them in a private cloud allows the organization to get some of the other benefits of cloud computing while also retaining control and use of the application.
- Using a private cloud gives a company total control not only over its data but also over the hardware that stores and serves it.
Private clouds also offer many of the same benefits as public clouds. These include the ability to pool resources throughout the entire cloud so that applications are able to get what they need instead of being limited to the resources that are on their “host” system. These pooled resources lead to a highly elastic system that can be allocated to meet demand peaks or business shifts. They even allow companies to internally bill departments on a usage basis instead of just levying charges for capital expenditures. Internal clouds also make it easier for departments and users to get the services that they need since the private cloud infrastructure adds an automated self-service layer.
Though, for many organizations, security is the main reason to leverage a private cloud, it’s far from the only one. Private clouds offer many benefits over public clouds. At the same time, they can also give a company many of the public cloud’s unique capabilities, making them truly the best of both worlds.
