Daniel Hicks, VMware Cloud Business Manager at TD SYNNEX delves into the three Cs causing the rise in private Clouds: cost, complexity, and compliance
When it comes to investing in IT infrastructure, many businesses are asking themselves whether being exclusively on the public Cloud remains the best option. Whilst the public Cloud does offer clear advantages when it comes to elasticity and bursting workloads, many IT leaders now recognise that in some cases the private Cloud is the more appropriate option.
The reasons behind this shift can be thought of as the three Cs: cost, complexity, and compliance.
Complexity is an issue because compute, storage and networking workloads have become siloed. Managing these environments has become an operations problem, diverting time and energy away from innovation and supporting business growth. As we all know, with complexity also comes cost. This is particularly difficult for enterprise businesses who have multiple platforms and configurations, requiring that they re-factor or re-platform applications and spend time keeping systems running which, once again, takes away from the ability to innovate. Finally, and especially with widespread use of AI and shadow AI across the enterprise, there are challenges around compliance.
Stringent data privacy and security regulations mean that it is more important than ever to know where data is being stored, how it is being provisioned for use in different parts of the business and by whom. Having siloed environments makes it harder for enterprises to guarantee that their data is properly managed and only accessible by those that are permitted to do so.
Addressing complexity
A lot of enterprises are still built on legacy infrastructure which is very siloed. Whilst this does maintain data privacy, facilitates high performance of applications and helps them manage costs, it also builds in technical debt that stops them from innovating at the speed they need to. In today’s business environment, enterprises need to be able to operate across Cloud boundaries with consistent infrastructure and operations.
What businesses need is a simplified platform that provides a virtualised and programmatic-consistent infrastructure, operations and automation tools across all of their environments. This model breaks down siloes and provides an overview of all cloud environments, the status of virtual machines, and inventory, allowing IT teams to deliver services for internal developers easily and quickly. In doing so, enterprises can replicate the benefits of microservices in the public Cloud in their private Cloud environments, improving the speed of innovation and making them more competitive in the marketplace.
Cutting costs
A key challenge for the enterprise is the costs that can quickly skyrocket as they scale public Cloud deployments. Many businesses that have adopted the public Cloud have come up against unexpected costs, whether due to having to scale their environment, data transfers or premium services that have caused budget overruns. IT teams have found themselves at the crux of having to manage workloads and ensure that they are tailored to the needs of the business, a task that is becoming more thankless with the advent of AI and the demand for extra compute capacity.
Private Cloud platforms offer a range of solutions to these problems. For a start, they can help to streamline the deployment, operation and management of Cloud infrastructure, helping IT teams get a grip on their total cost of ownership. Automated deployment and lifecycle management simplifies and automates routine tasks, reducing the need for hands on management and lowering operational spending.
Moreover, storage costs can be reduced by removing non-essential components and optimising configurations. Moreover, new features like memory tiering can address core-to-memory imbalances and aid better workload and virtual machine consolidation, reducing spend on both memory and licensing even for data intensive AI, e-commerce or video streaming workloads. This means that organisations, such as schools that use online learning platforms for learning and exams, can quickly scale to accommodate large numbers of users quickly whilst benefitting from the data privacy and security of the private Cloud. In delivering these benefits, private Cloud platforms help enterprises ensure that they have an efficient, cost-effective environment that is not weighing on their balance sheet or their progress.
Keeping ahead on compliance
For some time now, policymakers have put a great deal of focus on where data lives. This has been driven both by privacy concerns and with a view to advancing economic and investment goals. The recent furore over DeepSeek is a perfect example of how AI is driving an even greater focus on data residency and compliance.
Legislators and enterprises are deeply concerned about the nature of the data that is being entered into AI platforms and the potential for IP leakage or the disclosure of private personal information to people not permitted to access it. The European Union’s AI Act is currently the most robust set of regulations when it comes to AI use and data privacy but, given the pace of innovation we are seeing in the AI space, it is expected that other markets, including the UK, will follow suit in the near future.
Businesses need a Cloud platform that supports zero trust principles, offers cyber resilience, recovery and compliance. In adopting such a platform across their public and private Cloud environments, they can be confident that they are up to speed with current rules and future proofed as regulations change.
Tackling the three Cs
By leveraging the private Cloud enterprises can improve their Cloud strategy and address the three Cs that are slowing their progress. With the right platform, it is possible to reduce costs, cut out complexity and improve compliance with current and future regulations. By choosing a solution that provides a consistent, virtualised approach to their infrastructure across their Cloud environments, enterprises can take advantage of the best of the public and the private Cloud, improving the speed at which they provision services and making themselves more secure. Doing so promises to help them deliver more innovation internally, improve their operations, and make them more competitive in today’s AI enabled world.
Daniel Hicks is the VMware GTM Business Manager at TD SYNNEX UK. Some of his main responsibilities include helping UK IT resellers thrive in a shifting landscape of subscription models, hybrid cloud, and SaaS. Daniel focuses on driving recurring revenue, technical enablement, and go-to-market success.
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