Gartner Encourages Private Clouds- Ideal For Charlotte Colocation

Gartner gave Charlotte colocation providers a reason to feel confident about the potential for significant future growth with a report released last week advising businesses to shift from traditional private computing models into virtualization with the focus on leveraging a private cloud.  At the IT Infrastructure, Operations, and Management Summit 2011 in Orlando, FL analysts of the well-known information technology research and advisory company professed the benefits that businesses will recognize by migrating to this model.

“Delivery of service levels at cost and with agility” was the battle cry from Gartner analyst Thomas Bittman.  He continued by stating that IT departments need to understand that there is a responsibility that goes beyond merely hosting and managing equipment.  The message was clearly conveyed that leveraging virtualization will allow organizations to operate private clouds, thereby providing IT services to the units in an organization that truly need them, often on a chargeback basis.

Gartner representatives continued to note that the physical diagraming required for developing this type of solution demands a strategic approach.  “Transitioning the data center to be more cloud-like could be great for the business, but it causes you to make some difficult architecture decisions, too" remarked Gartner Analyst Chris Wolf.  Much was mentioned about the need for IT managers and CIOs to avoid the path of least resistance to construct a private cloud, which would result in the construction of the solution by simply adding virtual machines to existing physical servers.

There was some discussion about the true definition of the term “cloud”, but Gartner focused squarely on developing solutions that work best for a business, even if the setup is does not equal the full definition of the term.  The solutions may be “cloud-like” from the service providers and vendors, who insist that full automation in operations are required for a solution to be considered a cloud by definition.  Wolf continued to profess “some manual processes have to be expected.”

A quick look at the marketplace reveals that VMware dominates the landscape; however, Hyper-V from Microsoft has seen steady growth and XenServer from Citrix is beginning to become more prevalent as well.  With market share comes costs.  Currently VMware has high licensing costs and restrictions on “per-VM use in the cloud”; therefore, IT decision makers may wish to hold off on making any long term commitments to a solution. Using multiple virtulization providers in a solution could present operational challenges.

Gartner noted the lack of mature management tools in the market today.  Wolf stated that there is a “disconnect” between what CIOs need from the market and what the market is supplying regarding these tools.  He noted that a recent forum of CIOs that were overseeing the development of internal private clouds revealed that three quarters of them were using “home-grown” management tools for activities such as ticketing and connecting to asset management systems.

Gartner is promoting the vision for companies to embrace plans to craft a long-term private cloud strategy, this approach should prepare them for the future of cloud evolvement which will likely include additional products and services, as well as suppliers and vendors who cease to offer services. Gartner cautioned that private cloud planning “will involve updating procurement and change management processes used internally today” and also noted that a determination will be needed to understand which applications work well in the cloud and which do not.  An example was presented showing that enterprise level Microsoft SharePoint does not work well in VMware.  Gartner suggested that companies considering private clouds can benefit by stipulating in future RFPs to software vendors the need for their applications to work properly in this type of environment and note that element in the RFP.

One of the most notable changes to IT operations in the virtualized world is the approach to networking, and how it relates to multiple office environments and disaster recovery plans.  According to Gartner, there is a significant increase in bandwidth under a virtualized setup resulting in as much as 25 times the current bandwidth from a similar existing physical footprint.  His remarks bring to point how valuable third party data centers can be.  These data external centers are designed with future growth in mind and are typically overbuilt, or designed to scale to increase service capabilities with minimal effort.  Data centers can provide bandwidth in enormous volumes (10Gbps and up) that allow enterprises to leverage the services and the centralized approach that Gartner also advises migrating to.

Leveraging virtualization with the ultimate goal to develop secure private clouds using any of the three providers can greatly benefit an organization when executed with a well-designed plan.  Additional benefits can also be realized by centralizing these operations in a secure and reliable data center.  DC74 data centers provide secure facilities and environments designed to accommodate private clouds through leasing or by using a portion or all of a company’s existing IT infrastructure for Baltimore, Washington DC, and Charlotte colocation arrangements.