Augment Your Hybrid IT Strategy With a Self-Service Private Cloud

Cloud computing is a must-have element in any IT strategy. However, public clouds have some shortcomings, especially in the enterprise environment. These include security and privacy concerns, the lack of control and customization, cost management challenges, performance and latency issues, and limited support for legacy systems. 

As cloud computing demand increases, most enterprises adopt a hybrid cloud approach, combining private and public cloud services to meet their needs:

• 80% of organizations have adopted a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy. (IDC) 

• 62% of organizations cite security, data protection, and data sovereignty concerns as the top reasons for moving workloads out of public clouds. (Voice of the Enterprise) 

• 70% of customer applications are outside the public cloud, running on x86 hypervisor-based virtualization. (Gartner) 

Self-service private cloud solutions have become the top choice for many enterprise IT leaders. Let’s explore what they are, their use cases and benefits, and key considerations when implementing a self-service private cloud solution. 

What is a Private Cloud?

A private cloud offers an infrastructure where computing resources like servers, storage, and networking are dedicated to a single organization. It provides greater control, security, and customization than public clouds. Companies may host private clouds on-premises or through a third-party provider. 

Self-service private cloud solutions have become the top choice for many enterprise IT leaders. Let’s explore what they are, their use cases and benefits, and key considerations when implementing a self-service private cloud solution. 

The Rise of the Self-Service Private Cloud 

A self-service private cloud combines the flexibility of cloud computing with the security and control of private infrastructure by enabling authorized users to provision, manage, and scale cloud resources on demand without intervention from IT administrators. 

These solutions use automation tools and orchestration frameworks to streamline provisioning and resource management to reduce IT workload. They have become increasingly popular because they offer these top benefits: 

• Increase agility and speed: Accelerate time to market with a developer-centric approach to foster innovation and eliminate IT bottlenecks. 

• Support hybrid cloud strategies: Allow organizations to extend cloud-like capabilities to their private environments without sacrificing control over sensitive data and workloads. 

• Improve resource optimization: Enable on-demand resource allocation to avoid over-provisioning or underutilization. 

• Enhance compliance and security: Ensure that sensitive data stays within an organization’s control while offering the flexibility of cloud resources. 

• Integrate with automation and DevOps tools: Incorporate infrastructure provisioning into CI/CD pipelines to enable seamless application deployment and scaling. 

Self-Service Private Cloud Use Cases and Benefits

What can a self-service private cloud solution do for you? Here are some top use cases:

For IT Executives 

A self-service private cloud centralizes cloud management so that IT can provision resources autonomously while retaining control over policy, security, and governance. You can enhance security and compliance by keeping sensitive data on-premises or within specific jurisdictions. Moreover, IT can integrate automation tools and DevOps pipelines for faster deployment. 

A robust, scalable solution helps you quickly spin up and efficiently manage VMs across your virtualized estate while eliminating costly firefighting due to outages. Meanwhile, a VM-centric management approach helps lower the investment required for virtualized workloads across.

For Lines of Business (LOB) 

A self-service portal supports agile resource provisioning, allowing LOB managers and project owners to provision VMs, storage, and applications without waiting for approval or assistance from the IT department — allowing teams to scale and customize their computing environments for specific projects and accelerate time to market. 

A multiple workload-optimized, hyper-converged solution allows you the flexibility to run, grow, and transform VM across a hybrid cloud environment. You can scale instantly with the buffer available with your consumption model and achieve peak and predictable performance for your projects while reducing resource, management, and cost challenges. 

For Finance Executives 

A self-service private cloud provides granular cost-tracking capabilities for every department or project, providing finance teams with visibility to prevent over-provisioning or overspending and improve resource utilization. Moreover, cost transparency helps you better forecast and predict IT costs for accurate budget planning.  

You can ensure the enterprise gets the most value from its IT investments by allocating resources efficiently and aligning IT spending with business objectives. You can achieve a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) with a secure VM infrastructure while consolidating everything into a single pay-as-you-go solution to avoid extra expenses. 

Maximize the Benefits of Self-Service Private Cloud with HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition 

The HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform is the industry’s most complete solution for storing, managing, and protecting data across hybrid clouds. It reduces complexity and silos across the data lifecycle, simplifying data management with an AIOps-driven, intuitive cloud operational experience while meeting demanding application requirements.  

HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition changes how enterprises procure and manage VMs with a self-service private cloud in on-prem, co-located, and edge environments. It enables businesses to self-manage and orchestrate VMs across private and public clouds while providing integrated data protection mechanisms. 

The intuitive cloud experience eliminates the complexity of VM and infrastructure management, while the 100% availability guarantee for business-critical apps boosts resiliency. You can choose a consumption model that fits your needs, scale when required, and pay for what you use to optimize the total cost of ownership (TCO). 

Top Considerations For Implementing a Self-Service Private Cloud 

While choosing the right solution is critical, successful private cloud implementation requires a holistic approach. Here’s what to consider when planning your hybrid cloud strategy and implementation: 

Infrastructure Readiness 

Ensure your hardware, storage, networking, and compute resources can handle dynamic workloads and support a private cloud solution’s scalability and performance requirements. Private clouds rely heavily on virtualization technologies, so your virtualization stack should be compatible with cloud orchestration tools. 

Cloud Management Platform (CMP) 

Use a CMP to automate private cloud management with self-service portals, automation tools, and orchestration capabilities. It should also support your business and technical requirements and integrate seamlessly with your existing systems (e.g., identity management, monitoring, billing, and security tools.) 

Self-Service Capabilities 

Support the implementation with an intuitive self-service portal where users can easily provision, manage, and de-provision resources without IT intervention. Your solution should also provide role-based access control (RBAC) to grant users access to specific resources based on their responsibilities. 

Resource Allocation and Management 

Define resource quotas and establish policies to allocate each user and department a fair amount of compute, storage, and network capacity. Monitor cloud usage and performance and use the data insights to optimize resource utilization and prevent outages. 

Security and Compliance 

Enforce robust identity and access management (IAM) policies so only authorized users can access the private cloud. Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA), encryption, audit trails, security monitoring, incidence response, and data protection mechanisms to meet industry-specific compliance standards like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS. 

Workload Optimization 

Assess workloads' suitability, scalability, and complexity before migrating them to the private cloud. If you have a hybrid cloud model using both public and private clouds, consider how your private cloud solution integrates with public cloud services (e.g., AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud) to manage hybrid workloads effectively. 

HPE + Compugen: Private Cloud For Modern Enterprises 

With HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition, you can optimize VM performance, improve resource utilization, reduce infrastructure complexity, minimize downtime, simplify management, and accelerate AI adoption. 

As a long-time HPE Platinum partner, we’ve helped our clients implement holistic hybrid IT strategies and augment them with best-of-breed solutions from HPE, including GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition, to support their IT strategy and business objectives. 

Learn more about our partnership and get in touch to see how we can help you augment your hybrid IT strategy with HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud. 

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