It’s not today, or tomorrow, but sometime in the not too distant future the bulk of the on-premise private cloud market is going to shrivel into a little raisin and die. A very small number of very large companies will operate private clouds that will be, by an large, poor substitutes for the services available in public clouds. However, they will be good enough for these companies for some percentage of their workloads.
I have seen dozens of private cloud efforts by many large customers. Most are pretty weak shells of a cloud, not coming close to the economics or capabilities of even 2nd or 3rd tier public clouds. Comparing them to AWS, Azure or Google is like comparing my art work to a Picasso or Rembrandt. The only similarity is that I can still call mine art even if it’s atrocious. I can still call your cloud a cloud too – even if it’s expensive, inelastic, and lacking anything but the most basic of features. Some will be reasonable, but in the long run it’s a game you cannot win.