If your team doesn’t know what to look for in a private cloud solution, you might end up picking a terrible choice for your organization. That one bad decision could put your business at a huge disadvantage for key IT activities such as developing applications, protecting data and building great customer experiences.

Private cloud offers many of the same benefits as public cloud, including deployment, scalability, ease of use and elasticity, but it can also provide greater control, increased performance, tighter security and flexible management options.

The benefits of the technology are clear, but what exactly should your team look for in a private cloud solution?

Here are four crucial elements to help you answer that question:

1. Integration

In today’s IT landscape, anyone who argues for private cloud or public cloud alone is missing the point. Most organizations rely on a hybrid cloud solution that includes both public and private services, often from multiple cloud providers.

If your private cloud doesn’t include capabilities for moving data or applications between platforms, your team will suffer a major disadvantage. Middleware and other integration capabilities may be the difference between failure and success.

2. Security and compliance

Security is one of the main benefits of private cloud. It enables your organization to enjoy the benefits of cloud behind your own firewall. This does not mean that every solution is equally secure, however.

Choose a cloud provider with a history of protecting client data. You should also look for a service with customization options that will help you meet any unique compliance requirements your organization might have.

3. Development support

In the new multicloud world, chances are your organization will need to deploy its applications to a diverse range of software environments. IT management will be much easier if your developers are building cloud-native applications.

Choose a solution that provides your developers with tools such as microservices and container orchestration. These capabilities will help your engineers write software with the cloud in mind.

4. Modernization capabilities

Most enterprises have a great deal of valuable legacy systems that weren’t originally designed for the cloud. Yet these applications may also be crucial for their business.

Rather than abandoning these investments, look for a private cloud that can help your organization modernize older software as you continue to ramp towards a cloud-first IT strategy.

Choosing a private cloud provider is a major decision, so it helps to know all you can. For more information on private cloud, download your free copy of “IBM Cloud Private for Dummies.

 

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