By Laurent Lachal, Senior Analyst, Software – IT Solutions

Users are unsure of – or have very different views on – what constitutes a private cloud, which makes any survey about the subject rather meaningless.

They approach private clouds from a variety of viewpoints including bottom–up versus top–down, technology versus design, and long-term versus short-term perspectives.

Ovum does not advocate moving from a short-term, technology-centric, bottom-up approach to a long-term, design-centric, top-down approach, but we do believe the latter is more useful than the former.

In the Ovum report, Cloud Computing Needs Service Level Management, Ovum advocates a balanced approach according to specific company requirements and culture, based on a shift from supply-led to demand-led IT.

Look at private cloud from all angles

The bottom-up viewpoint is that of the IT department. It looks at private clouds from a data centre industrialisation, consolidation, and standardisation perspective based on:

• virtualisation technologies (to …