Internal private clouds doomed to fail

Businesses should adopt private hosted clouds instead, says Forrester...

Internal private clouds developed by businesses are likely to fail, according to a report from Forrester Research.

Most enterprises lack the expertise in virtualisation to develop clouds internally, says the report, and "aren't ready for the level of automation and standardisation a cloud environment requires".

Forrester surveyed businesses that are looking to adopt cloud computing to take advantage of infrastructure as a service, which means accessing servers through the cloud instead of physically buying servers, software and datacentre space.

Businesses should adopt either hosted private clouds or community clouds, according to Forrester
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According to a poll conducted by silicon.com, many businesses are looking to move IT services to the cloud, but Forrester predicts that concerns over public cloud security will result in many companies opting for private cloud.

Forrester advises companies against developing their own private cloud due to the large amounts of money, time and expertise required, but predicts that many businesses will go ahead anyway and most likely fail. The report advises businesses that do want to attempt to develop an internal cloud to do so on a smaller scale so they can "fail fast and fail quietly".

As an alternative to internal private clouds, Forrester says hosted private clouds will become more popular and "will outnumber internal clouds three to one". Hosted private clouds have the additional benefit of providing businesses with a fast route to private cloud services as well as passing the demand for technical expertise on to a third party.

For businesses that cannot afford hosted private clouds, the report predicts that community clouds will begin to be established, which are set up by a group of enterprises to provide a single pool of applications, data and resources.

A community cloud will allow businesses to have varying levels of responsibility depending on their capabilities, providing a cheaper alternative to private clouds and a more secure alternative to public ones.