With more companies adopting private cloud and hybrid cloud environments, questions are arising as to what makes a private cloud truly a cloud and how cloud services providers (CSPs) fit in the hybrid cloud space.

To help clarify those issues, Stu Miniman, principal research contributor at Wikibon and Brian Gracely, lead cloud analyst at Wikibon participated in a CrowdChat on Feb. 11, 2016. During the hour-long chat, they expounded on the information in Wikibon’s True Private Cloud Projections report, including the definition of true private cloud and where providers’ offerings fit within that definition, and gave their thoughts about the major CSPs’ role in hybrid cloud environments.

What it means to have a true private cloud

For a private cloud to be a “true private cloud,” it should “emulate the pricing, agility, low operational staffing and breadth of services” of public cloud as much as possible, according to Wikibon’s definition.

Companies need more than just virtualization and more than virtualization-plus, Miniman said. In the past, the definition of private cloud was open to interpretation.

“Now we’re getting to a maturation where what [companies are] deploying looks more like what a private cloud should be,” he said. “It’s not about saying private cloud has to do everything a public cloud can do, but it is moving down that spectrum of getting out of that undifferentiated heavy lifting. It’s about moving some of that operational burden over to either the platform or the vendor that is going to be providing it.”

Gracely added that IT is still very cost-driven. They have to look at the costs and the alternatives.

“If you’re set on this belief that [private cloud is] just virtualization, there’s a chance that if you’re not trying to find simplicity, you’re not trying to drive out some of that costs that will align with speed out of your system, and you may find yourself struggling,” he said.

And actually, Wikibon’s research found users are separating their virtualization environment, which they looked at as a way to drive out cost, and they are starting to build private clouds separately for application development that is based more on open source technologies such as OpenStack, Docker and Cloud Foundry.

“They really were beginning to say, ‘Hey it’s about delivering APIs; it’s about helping developers,” Gracely said.

Still, Wikibon’s best estimate is that the true private cloud market is almost four times smaller than comparable public cloud.

“I think that surprises a lot of people. It’s going to be a wakeup,” Gracely said.

Is enterprise cloud true private cloud?

Is private cloud really “code for the same old virtualized infrastructure with a portal slapped in front and tons of professional services attached?” Kenneth Hui commented during the chat.

It can’t be, others said. “For companies to really leverage cloud characteristics, there needs to be an operational change,” said Justin Augat.

Miniman said it requires looking at what is true private cloud and what in the private cloud isn’t repeatable. Public clouds provide the exact same repeatable services over and over to customers. When enterprises do that, rather than make each task a one-off operation that is done slightly different by each IT operations person, they will provide more of a true private cloud. And that consistency will help drive down internal costs.

“If I need a lot of professional services to get up and keep it running, it’s probably not going to fall under our true private cloud definition,” he said. “It needs to act much more like a software product. … There needs to be more standardization and to work through that automation so that I don’t have to take all of my VM admins and everyone who was doing everything else and have them with different knobs and different things that they need to adjust.”

Gracely added that a true private cloud has to deliver results faster than a simple virtualized infrastructure and as a cost similar to what users can get in the public market.

“People are willing to slap a GUI in front of virtualization and call it private cloud,” Gracely said, asserting that that approach doesn’t add much business value. “You reach a point where you can only take so much cost out of what you’re doing through virtualization. You have to add agility and speed. And you’re not going to do that by just putting a web page in front of virtualization.”

Who are the private cloud providers?

Vendors leading true private cloud include HP Enterprise, VMware Inc., EMC Corp., IBM, NetApp, Oracle and Microsoft Azure.

“Microsoft, Oracle and others are creating environments that fit into our true private cloud [definition], or what some people call enterprise cloud,” Miniman said. “With those, they’re saying, ‘I have a stack that I can give you on premises, and I’ve also got that same stack or close enough to that same stack in our cloud. Therefore, you can choose whether you want a [capital expenditure] purchase, an [operational expenditure] purchase, or some kind of blended model.’”

A true private cloud also has links into the hybrid cloud, so it should be able to leverage some of those public cloud services, he said.

Hui said it seems as though the big three—Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Compute Engine (GCE)—all have hybrid plays but approach the problem differently.

“AWS is building virtual private clouds, Azure is providing full hardware/software on-premises stack, and GCE hopes… on-premises Kubernetes becomes their private cloud solution,” he said.

Floyd Strimling added that AWS is driving the market, “as they are listening to customers and combining with strategic priorities.”

Amazon is also finally starting to talk about hybrid, said Gracely.

“They’re saying ‘We realize you’re going to have to extend back to some existing applications that won’t make sense to move or are not cost effective to move,’ but for the things that you’re going to change or add on it will, in their belief, make more sense to run in Amazon’s cloud. And they’ll provide the network and the security to make that happen,” he said.

Although Amazon doesn’t put a box on the customer’s premises, they’re in position to be part of the hybrid discussion, Gracely said.

“Things are starting to converge,” he said. “They’re becoming less just public and just private.“

Photo by Mickey Aldridge via Flickr CC