Private Cloud Computing Deployments Advance Rapidly

Although there are very few private cloud computing deployments in production, new survey data from the VMworld 2010 conference suggests that that the number of IT organizations planning on building their own private clouds is a lot higher than most people might think.

Virtual Instruments, a provider of tools for optimizing I/O performance in virtual environments, last week polled over 200 attendees at the VMworld 2010 conference. A surprisingly high percentage (34 percent) said they have already implemented a private cloud computing platform, while another 23 percent said they would be implementing one in the next 12 months.

From an IT perspective, there is nothing easy about implementing a private cloud, so most of these deployments are probably still in the pilot stage. But the survey does show a massive amount of interest in private cloud computing.

Given the economic climate, Len Rosenthal, vice president of marketing for Virtual Instruments, says he thinks that most IT organizations are trying to cobble together private clouds by leveraging their existing IT resources, versus buying new cloud computing platforms such as the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) or the BladeSystem Matrix from Hewlett-Packard.

However they choose to get there, it does seem apparent that IT organizations are not only in a hurry to reduce the cost of IT infrastructure, but also take advantage of the inherent flexibility of cloud computing.

Obviously, attendees at a VMworld 2010 conference might be a little further down the private cloud computing path than others, especially with 35 percent reporting that they had virtualized 50 percent or more of their business-critical and database applications. But even taking into account the familiarity these attendees have with virtualization technologies, Rosenthal said the survey results show that IT organizations are moving quickly toward the next major phase of virtualization.

Of course, many IT organizations have a long way to go in their sophistication when it comes to virtualization management specifically and cloud computing in general. But the one thing that does appear certain is that they are eager to learn.

Click through for results from a virtualization survey conducted by Virtual Instruments.

Server virtualization is now firmly established in the enterprise.

These numbers are much higher than any other survey on the subject.

Other in this case is probably code for wary owners of the applications.

Some form of SAN dominates the virtual storage equation.

Most of these are probably still in the pilot stage.