Despite the widespread benefits of public cloud computing, concerns around security, data protection, and data sovereignty are what lead 80% of businesses to adopt a hybrid and multi-cloud strategy, combining public and private cloud environments. Enterprise hybrid cloud approaches, while advantageous, introduce complexities – especially in geographically distributed management. Let’s explore challenges in private cloud management and proven effective solutions.
Why Private Cloud Matters
A study by 451 Research revealed that 62% of organizations cite the following factors as the primary reasons for migrating workloads away from the public cloud:
- Data security protection and leakage
- Data locality and sovereignty
Despite significant cloud migration and container adoption, a substantial portion of data center workloads continue to be managed through on-premises private cloud environments. Industry forecasts predict that by 2027, 50% of data center workloads will still be managed through traditional hypervisor-based virtualization outside the public cloud. This trend can be attributed to several priorities, including security and data residency.
Industries such as finance, healthcare, and government prioritize maintaining complete control over their data, making private cloud environments a highly attractive solution.
The Challenges of Private Cloud Management
Private clouds provide a unique combination of control, security, performance, predictability, and flexibility to complement today’s modern enterprise IT needs. This resonates with 89% of IT leaders who believe that establishing a mature on-premises private cloud operations model is critical for optimizing operational efficiency and agility.
However, 76% of these same leaders acknowledge limitations in their current data management capabilities. This is because managing a private cloud environment presents the following challenges that hinder an organization:
Complex Hybrid Infrastructure
The integration of private clouds within hybrid environments requires constant provisioning and resource orchestration across disparate cloud ecosystems. This lack of uniformity creates inconsistent resource management, leading to inefficiencies, operational roadblocks, and increased security risks.
Here’s where solutions like HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition can empower your IT team to navigate the complexities of hybrid cloud management.
- Self-service agility and a unified cloud operational experience across your on-premises environment and your entire hybrid cloud.
- Streamlining daily tasks beyond initial deployment with automation and industry-leading AIOps powered by HPE InfoSight.
- Hybrid cloud virtual machines (VMs) are delivered on demand with flexible payment options.
Limited High Availability for Workloads
High availability is key for critical applications, but traditional virtualization struggles to deliver, especially at the edge.
Existing virtualization solutions typically offer four-nines (99.99%) availability. To keep up with the demand, solutions like HPE GreenLake guarantee six-nines data availability for both business-critical applications and general-purpose VMs deployed on-premises. Furthermore, HPE GreenLake offers five-nines uptime specifically designed for distributed edge sites.
Depending on your enterprise requirements, HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud provides flexibility by offering a choice of six-nines or five-nines availability for your VMs, ensuring industry-leading uptime while maintaining complete on-premises data control.
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Management Complexity
Traditional private cloud deployments can become bogged down in the complexities of VM management, often requiring specialized knowledge for even routine tasks. This restricts your IT generalists' agility and self-service capabilities and burdens your team with time-consuming maintenance activities.
An effective managed private cloud solution should enable your team to:
- Consolidate management of VMs and infrastructure across your entire hybrid cloud environment – on-premises and public cloud – from a single, intuitive console.
- Create and protect VMs both on-premises and in the public cloud through a self-service portal, streamlining workflows and boosting productivity.
- Leverage automation and industry-leading AIOps capabilities to automate repetitive tasks, reducing the need for specialized domain expertise.
HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud recognizes the critical role IT plays in driving business success. By streamlining VM management through a single, intuitive console, HPE GreenLake empowers IT teams to shift their focus away from repetitive tasks and towards strategic initiatives that deliver real business value.
Slow Time to Value
Building a private cloud environment, whether managed or part of an enterprise hybrid cloud like HPE Hybrid Cloud, can take many resources. The traditional approach involves designing, procuring, implementing, and deploying the necessary hardware and software, which can significantly delay the benefits the cloud could bring your business.
HPE GreenLake recognizes this challenge and offers the following to unlock the full potential of your private cloud:
- Pre-configured solutions to eliminate lengthy design and procurement processes, which significantly reduces implementation and deployment times.
- Optimized private cloud setup process to expedite time-to-value, enabling your organization to capitalize on business opportunities sooner.
IT Complexity for Virtual Workloads
Customers increasingly seek ways to reduce the complexity associated with managing virtual workloads. To address these challenges, customers require standardized solutions that provide a consistent and simplified approach to managing virtual workloads across all their environments.
A well-rounded private cloud solution, such as HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud, provides a highly automated virtualized infrastructure with built-in AIOps and predictive analytics. This streamlines infrastructure provisioning, configuration, and management, while also proactively anticipating and automatically addressing potential issues before they can disrupt your workloads.
Operational Efficiency
Complex virtual environments can be a challenge for even the most well-resourced IT teams. HPE GreenLake offers a solution that streamlines VM infrastructure management, optimizes cost and resource allocation, and frees up valuable IT staff to focus on driving innovation – like application development and deployment.
Scalability
As business demands evolve, organizations require scalable virtualized resources to support deployments across various environments. Adaptable and cost-optimized solutions are critical for managing workloads efficiently, regardless of size or location.
HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition offers user-friendly all-in-one solutions specifically designed for edge deployments, ensuring exceptional uptime reliability and built-in data protection across diverse locations – including core data centers, colocation facilities, and cloud environments. This flexibility empowers organizations to seamlessly scale or expand projects with variable payment options for maximum financial agility.
Empowering Your Private Cloud
HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition offers a powerful solution for managing various cloud environments. Here are five prime scenarios where HPE GreenLake shines:
- Scalable Virtualized Applications and Mixed Workloads: This solution is perfect for businesses running virtualized applications and mixed workloads that require easy scaling. It caters to customers who want a simple-to-administer VM solution managed by their existing staff, eliminating the need for additional IT specialists.
- VDI and End-User Computing: HPE GreenLake is ideal for businesses looking for a VDI or end-user computing solution for pilot deployments or production environments. It offers a right-sized solution with optimized resources, including single instancing, deduplication, GPU support, and other automated data services powered by AIOps.
- Empowering the Edge: Ideal for organizations with remote offices and branch offices (ROBO) that need a unified data management platform for data protection and non-latency-sensitive workloads. It helps eliminate data silos across backup, file/object storage, and archive functions.
- IT Consolidation, Refresh, and Data Center-in-a-Box: HPE GreenLake simplifies IT consolidation, VM refresh, and overall stack management by reducing the number of components requiring active management.
- App Modernization and Hybrid Cloud Foundation: This solution empowers businesses to modernize applications and build a strong foundation for an enterprise hybrid cloud environment, perfectly suited for DevSecOps, DevOps, and Test/Dev workflows. It achieves this by seamlessly integrating with both virtual machines (VMs) and containerized applications running on Kubernetes.
Regardless of your business goals, HPE GreenLake provides the tools and resources to streamline cloud operations, improve efficiency, and empower innovation.
Final Thoughts
Integrating private clouds into hybrid environments challenges IT leaders to ensure continuous operation and manage complex workloads. Solutions like HPE Hybrid Cloud and GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition simplify management, guarantee availability, and boost efficiency.
By leveraging HPE GreenLake, organizations maximize private cloud potential, driving innovation and gaining a competitive edge in the digital landscape. WEI, a leading IT solutions provider, can partner with your organization to implement HPE cloud solutions and streamline your infrastructure, paving the way for a smooth modernization journey. Contact us today to unlock your cloud’s full potential.
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