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A private or hybrid cloud has substantial benefits for enter-
prise IT as well. The move from dedicated infrastructure and
purpose-built hardware for each application to standardized
infrastructure reduces your reliance on and need for expensive
and hard to find IT specialists in favor of IT generalists. Some
organizations see a substantial benefit from changing CapEx
to OpEx, freeing up capital for other uses.
The initial idea of private cloud was to bring the capabilities
of public cloud services on-premises. However, many enter-
prises encounter limitations with that approach. Many existing
enterprise applications aren't well suited to run in the cloud.
They often require data management and data protection
capabilities that aren't needed by cloud-native applications.
Increasingly, IT teams recognize the benefits of an "Enter-
prise Cloud," a cloud designed specifically for enterprise needs
and tailored to meet the needs of both existing enterprise
applications and next-generation applications. An enterprise
cloud combines the agility and simplicity of public cloud
infrastructure with the predictable costs and control of
on-premises infrastructure.
ENTERPRISE CLOUD: INTERFACE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
To get your enterprise cloud right, it's important to think
about the architecture. There are two aspects to any cloud:
• The interface. How do end users see and access the
cloud? How do administrators manage it?
• The infrastructure. What technology is a cloud built on?
To succeed, you have to get both the interface and the
infrastructure right. If you get the interface wrong, end users
will be tempted to go elsewhere.
