Private cloud re-imagined as equal partner in multi-cloud world

Cloud-first has become the guiding principle for application modernisation and migration. Cloud-native is the mantra for application development. And hot technologies like containers, microservices and serverless computing are all associated with the public cloud. So, where does that leave the private cloud.Private cloud typically an on-premises data centre that enterprises are attempting to retrofit with virtualisation, automation, self-service, capacity planning, and other features that come built into the public cloud – has definitely taken a back seat. For a time, many enterprises seemed to be migrating as many apps as possible to the public cloud and relegating the private cloud to hosting an ever-shrinking collection of legacy, highly customised, out-of-support, end-of-life apps. But as we enter the second decade of the cloud revolution, a new vision has emerged in which private clouds become an equal partner in an integrated, multi-cloud world of private, public, and edge clouds.Gartner is calling this the distributed cloud, and Michael Warrilow, research vice president for infrastructure software, predicts that “it has a great potential for success.Warrilow in 2018 framed the issue facing traditional private clouds, which did not have the infrastructure to match hyperscale public cloud. Infrastructure and Operations leaders must resist the temptation to mimic a style of computing that they are ill equipped to replicate,he wrote in a research report.