By Guy Harrison
The promises of public cloud computing - pay as you go, infinite scale and outsourced administration - are compelling. However, for most enterprises, security, geography and risk mitigation concerns make private cloud platforms more desirable. Enterprise customers like the idea of on-demand provisioning, but are often unwilling to take the performance, security and risk drawbacks of moving applications to remote hardware that is not under their direct control.
A private cloud goes beyond simply offering virtualized servers using VMware or another virtualization platform. It typically requires a framework that manages resource allocation, storage, security, multi-tenancy, chargeback, and other characteristics of the public cloud.
A number of vendors have created viable private cloud platforms. The platform offered by 3Tera - acquired by CA earlier this year - allows enterprises to create a grid environment in which complete application stacks can be rapidly configured and provisioned. The open source Eucalyptus platform provides a software stack that allows the user to create an Amazon-compatible cloud computing environment on local hardware. Full article.
To stay on top of all the trends, subscribe to Database Trends and Applications magazine.