By Vissarion Yfantis

December 3, 2019
Last updated on September 28, 2022

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Private Cloud Providers Are Being Taken Over by MSPs

Despite the popularity of public clouds, many organizations still need the benefits only private clouds can offer. However, there’s a hitch—private clouds can be complicated to build and maintain, and very few organizations have the in-house talent to address those issues. Their best bet is to partner with private cloud providers (PCPs) or managed service providers (MSPs).

Types of Private Clouds

Depending on the services offered, private clouds can be of different types. For instance, some private cloud options offer Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), while some can be Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers. Some private clouds can also host storage, compute services, or networking services. Depending on the hosting environment, however, the types of private clouds are:

Virtual Private Cloud

A virtual private cloud exists in a walled-off environment within a public cloud. Organizational workloads run in this environment in an isolated manner. While the main server is shared within organizations, the virtual logic isolates the data and applications of each cloud from the other, making it private. This option is suitable for organizations looking for lower costs.

Hosted Private Cloud

The hosted private cloud consists of a separate server for an organization, which is not shared. Service providers are responsible for configuring the hardware, software, and network. Still, a single organization uses the server as a whole, and the organization is responsible for its day-to-day activities. It can be hosted on-premises or in a data center, and this option offers greater security and availability. This option is suitable for organizations looking for higher security but with their own human resources to handle day-to-day operations.

Managed Private Cloud

As the name suggests, this private cloud requires the cloud service provider to not only host but completely manage the private cloud. In other words, the cloud service provider manages and monitors all the day-to-day operations deploys and updates additional storage or identity management services. This is suitable for organizations looking for higher security but lacks experts who can handle day-to-day cloud operations.

The Benefits Offered

Private clouds have several benefits, including the following: 

• Allows complete control over resources. A private cloud gives organizations the flexibility to design a cloud to meet their specific requirements. This helps avoid under-utilization and over-utilization since resources can be added or reallocated with minimum difficulty.
• Offers better performance and scalability. Utilizing private cloud options also takes the complexity out of deploying cloud and bare metal servers. Whether your private cloud is managed in-house or through a service provider, having more control over your infrastructure translates to better performance as it is easier to scale up and increase capacity as needed.
• Meets regulatory requirements. Since responsibility for the physical infrastructure lies solely with the organization, private clouds can be deployed according to the data policies applicable to one’s business. This allows you to comply with privacy and other standards that the multi-tenancy inherent in public clouds would find difficult to meet.
• Provides a good disaster recovery option. Private clouds are designed such that they strongly support replication and failover, ensuring high availability and maximum uptime. Not only does this make the private cloud architecture a good fit for applications and workloads that demand continuous availability, it also makes an ideal disaster recovery solution.
• Supports legacy applications. Migrating legacy applications to a public cloud can be challenging, if not downright unachievable. This could compel businesses to consider new cloud applications instead—a move that many companies may not be prepared for. A private cloud however, can be custom-configured so that it meets the required specifications for legacy applications, making for an easier transition.

Major Private Cloud Vendors

The most well-known public cloud vendors include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, and IBM. However, deciding on the most prominent private cloud vendors isn’t quite as simple. The major private cloud vendors that offer the best private cloud services are:

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

HPE is one of the top 10 private cloud providers. It sells its private cloud offering under the Helion name and offers hardware, software, and cloud services. It offers managed and virtual cloud solutions, allowing better operations management, thus ensuring a secure cloud solution.  

VMWare 

VMWare stands hand in hand with HPE when it comes to its sales in the private cloud. Accounting for 7 percent of the private cloud market, VMWare offers virtual private cloud, dedicated cloud, and hybrid cloud. It offers its virtualization software and software-defined data center platform, making it one of the market leaders.  

Dell 

Dell sells private cloud solutions, servers, storage, cloud management, and security software. Its private cloud solution, Dell Cloud, allows users to customize the cloud solution with an end-end portfolio, helping companies cut cloud deployment time and effort. It centralizes cloud management, offers application monitoring, automates workload delivery, secures access, simplifies provisioning, and manages access. 

BMC Software 

A global leader in software solutions, BMC is also known for offering a competitive advantage over other providers in the private cloud. It offers an innovative, agile, full-stack service that is scalable, intelligent, and easy to deploy. 

IBM 

IBM solutions offer hosted private cloud services, cloud managed services, cloud manager, cloud orchestrator, and mainframe cloud capabilities.  

Microsoft 

Microsoft offers Windows Server and the Microsoft Azure Stack as its private cloud solution, and its operating system and virtualization software are its strengths. Microsft’s multi-platform support, enterprise-wide storage management, data protection, and cost-effectiveness make it one of the top 10 private cloud solutions. 

Cisco 

Cisco offers its ONE Enterprise Cloud Site, Metapod, and Cloud Center. Its Intervloud Fabric is secure and flexible, and Cisco’s secure hybrid cloud introduces no distinction between external and internal clouds.  

Platform.sh 

Platform.sh is targeted towards the web application market and is the official cloud partner of open source projects like Symfony and Drupal Commerce. It offers the features of flexible deployment, scalability, built-in Github and Bitbucket integrations, and configurable micro-container architecture.   

Red Hat 

RedHat offers its Cloud Suite, software, virtualization capabilities, OpenStack Platform, and Gluster Storage. It has the strengths of being an open-source software with cloud management capabilities, making it one of the top 10 solutions.  

Amazon Web Services 

Amazon Web Services not only has its domain name in the public cloud market but is also gaining popularity as a viable private cloud solution. Its top solution is its Virtual Private Cloud which runs over its public cloud infrastructure.  

Key Features of Private Cloud Services

While each major vendor has their own offerings bundled into their private cloud services, there are some notable features common to most providers that have to be considered by enterprises when choosing their vendor:

• Multi-Tenancy. Cloud providers may offer a multi-tenant private cloud where parts of an organization (e.g. different departments or divisions of the same company) have access to all or a part of the cloud and use the resources to run the operations specific to their unit.
• Billing. Private cloud users are billed according to the compute, network, and storage resources that were utilized. Data on resource usage is usually generated at hourly intervals and accessible through the customer’s billing portal. In the case of a multi-tenant cloud, each user group within an enterprise generally is assigned its own subscription so as to easily identify the costs per division.
• Reporting. The reporting capabilities of private cloud solutions are essential for organizations as the data allows sys-admins to keep track of the usage metrics across groups, applications, appliances, storage, etc., and help them manage their infrastructure effectively.
• API. Vendors provide API platforms that developers can configure to help businesses manage and secure their private cloud resources as well as automate cloud operations.
• Delivery. Cloud providers are expected to deliver the needed resources to users when and where needed. Deployment may be made to an on-premise environment, through a dedicated virtual cloud, or a combination of both.
• Elasticity. Companies don’t want to over allocate and spend too much, but they would also want to have adequate resources in case the need dramatically increases. That’s why the ease with which resources can be scaled up or down is also an important consideration when evaluating vendors.

MSPs: Managing the Cloud Infrastructure

Companies aren’t familiar with the staff who’ll be in close contact with their data in large public-cloud environments. However, if their MSP manages the cloud infrastructure, that means their data is under the care and supervision of people they already know and trust. That’s a big draw, especially for businesses governed by laws and regulations like PCI-DSS and GDPR or strict corporate security policies.

As an MSP, you have the option to partner with a cloud service provider (CSP) and offer public-cloud services. However, one advantage of being a private cloud provider is that you have more control if something goes wrong. It’s undoubtedly going to be much easier to maintain service-level agreements (SLAs) if you can immediately address an issue in your cloud’s physical infrastructure instead of waiting for CSP engineers to resolve it for you.

The Biggest Challenge

The biggest challenge of being a private cloud provider is dealing with all the complexities and costs of building and maintaining everything, such as the physical servers, networking, data storage, cooling, and virtualization environment. 

While maintenance and management can be dealt with with the help of experts in the cloud computing genre, the pricing of private computing has to be the biggest challenge for private cloud providers. The upfront costs associated with operating a private cloud on-premises are comparatively expensive compared to using a public cloud.   

The capital expense of implementing a private cloud, amalgamated with back-end maintenance costs, makes on-premises private cloud unreasonably expensive. However, these costs can somewhat be controlled by providing a managed private cloud as a service.  

Private cloud providers can use the one-year subscription model or the pay-as-you-go model to obtain a suitable price for the spectrum of hardware, software, and services they offer. However, the pricing models also lack a one-size-fits-all strategy, as every business and organizational need is different. To create a flexible pricing model that caters to businesses and covers up the costs incurred by private cloud providers, it is important to tailor these prices according to the business needs and the spectrum of vendor products that the business requires.  

Become a Private Cloud Provider with Parallels RAS

One way to keep costs down is by leveraging solutions that you can manage internally as an MSP. One example is Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS). As an application delivery and virtual desktop infrastructure solution (VDI) solution, Parallels RAS plays a significant role in the private cloud-based application and desktop delivery. It enables businesses to securely deliver applications and desktops to end-users regardless of where and what device they’re using.

Parallels RAS is available for MSPs that want to give it a test run (offering a 30-day free trial!) or learn more about the Parallels Partner Program for Parallels RAS!

Download the Trial