Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud definition

Hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment which uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud and public cloud services with orchestration between the two platforms. By allowing workloads to move between private and public clouds as computing needs and costs change, hybrid cloud gives businesses greater flexibility and more data deployment options.

For example, an enterprise can deploy an on-premises private cloud to host sensitive or critical workloads, but use a third-party public cloud provider, such as Google Compute Engine, to host less-critical resources, such as test and development workloads. To hold customer-facing archival and backup data, a hybrid cloud could also use Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). A software layer, such as Eucalyptus, can facilitate private cloud connections to public clouds, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Hybrid cloud is particularly valuable for dynamic or highly changeable workloads. For example, a transactional order entry system that experiences significant demand spikes around the holiday season is a good hybrid cloud candidate. The application could run in private cloud, but use cloud bursting to access additional computing resources from a public cloud when computing demands spike. To connect private and public cloud resources, this model requires a hybrid cloud environment.

Another hybrid cloud use case is big data processing. A company, for example, could use hybrid cloud storage to retain its accumulated business, sales, test and other data, and then run analytical queries in the public cloud, which can scale to support demanding distributed computing tasks.

Public cloud's flexibility and scalability eliminates the need for a company to make massive capital expenditures to accommodate short-term spikes in demand. The public cloud provider supplies compute resources, and the company only pays for the resources it consumes.

Despite its benefits, hybrid cloud can present technical, business and management challenges. Private cloud workloads must access and interact with public cloud providers, so hybrid cloud requires API compatibility and solid network connectivity.

For the public cloud piece of hybrid cloud, there are potential connectivity issues, SLA breaches and other possible public cloud service disruptions. To mitigate these risks, organizations can architect hybrid workloads that interoperate with multiple public cloud providers. However, this can complicate workload design and testing. In some cases, workloads slated for hybrid cloud must be redesigned to address the specific providers' APIs.

Management tools such as Egenera PAN Cloud Director, RightScale Cloud Management and Scalr Enterprise Cloud Management Platform help businesses handle workflow creation, service catalogs, billing and other tasks related to hybrid cloud.

What is Hybrid Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing has evolved in recent years. The new world of the hybrid cloud is an environment that employs both private and public cloud services. Companies are realizing that they need many different types of cloud services in order to meet a variety of customer needs.

The growing importance of hybrid cloud environments is transforming the entire computing industry as well as the way businesses are able to leverage technology to innovate. Economics and speed are the two greatest issues driving this market change.

There are two primary deployment models of clouds: public and private. Most organizations will use a combination of private computing resources (data centers and private clouds) and public services, where some of the services existing in these environments touch each other — this is the hybrid cloud environment.

The public cloud

Hybrid Cloud

The public cloud is a set of hardware, networking, storage, services, applications, and interfaces owned and operated by a third party for use by other companies or individuals. These commercial providers create a highly scalable data center that hides the details of the underlying infrastructure from the consumer.

Public clouds are viable because they typically manage relatively repetitive or straightforward workloads. For example, electronic mail is a very simple application. Therefore, a cloud provider can optimize the environment so that it is best suited to support a large number of customers, even if they save many messages.

Public cloud providers offering storage or computing services optimize their computing hardware and software to support these specific types of workloads. In contrast, the typical data center supports so many different applications and so many different workloads that it cannot be optimized easily.

The private cloud

A private cloud is a set of hardware, networking, storage, services, applications, and interfaces owned and operated by an organization for the use of its employees, partners, and customers. A private cloud can be created and managed by a third party for the exclusive use of one enterprise.

The private cloud is a highly controlled environment not open for public consumption. Thus, a private cloud sits behind a firewall. The private cloud is highly automated with a focus on governance, security, and compliance.

Automation replaces more manual processes of managing IT services to support customers. In this way, business rules and processes can be implemented inside software so that the environment becomes more predictable and manageable.

The hybrid cloud

A hybrid cloud is a combination of a private cloud combined with the use of public cloud services where one or several touch points exist between the environments. The goal is to combine services and data from a variety of cloud models to create a unified, automated, and well-managed computing environment.

Combining public services with private clouds and the data center as a hybrid is the new definition of corporate computing. Not all companies that use some public and some private cloud services have a hybrid cloud. Rather, a hybrid cloud is an environment where the private and public services are used together to create value.

A cloud is hybrid

• If a company uses a public development platform that sends data to a private cloud or a data center–based application.
• When a company leverages a number of SaaS (Software as a Service) applications and moves data between private or data center resources.
• When a business process is designed as a service so that it can connect with environments as though they were a single environment.

A cloud is not hybrid

• If a few developers in a company use a public cloud service to prototype a new application that is completely disconnected from the private cloud or the data center.
• If a company is using a SaaS application for a project but there is no movement of data from that application into the company’s data center.

WebHosting

WebHostingBuzz was founded when the Web Hosting market was very different…Back in 2002 there were many over-priced, larger web hosting companies who took up the lion’s share of the market. These companies ran largely unchecked and, as a result, pricing was high and levels of service were low. The lack of good competition allowed the larger hosting companies to continue to get away with over-priced and underperforming web hosting services.

WebHostingBuzz was born with the idea of doing things a little different.

We started small but with a big idea. We wanted Web Hosting to be something that everyone could afford – from the home user right up to the international corporation.

We wanted to offer service levels that we could be proud of and built a customer service support network comprised of industry professionals who have a genuine interest in helping customers. We speak Plain English, not complicated technical jargon, because many of the web hosts back in 2002 would simply throw complicated user manuals at clients who asked for help.

Starting with just a reseller of a larger Web Hosting company, we set about shaking the industry up.

By the end of our first year, we had grown from the simple reseller hosting account to running three of our own dedicated servers. We had almost 1,000 clients already and WebHostingBuzz was developing a reputation for affordable quality.

The rest of the story, as they say, is history and today we have more than 250 of our own servers in three different data centers. We have grown from just two employees to over 45 dedicated staff. WebHostingBuzz currently has 250,000 websites hosted on our network and we’re continuing to grow every day.

One thing that remains clear – no matter how much we grow we stick to our original objective that is to provide good, fast Web Hosting, backed up by excellent customer service and always at an affordable price.
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Private Cloud & Solutions

Private cloud is the phrase used to describe a cloud computing platform that is implemented within the corporate firewall, under the control of the IT department.Private clouds offer an ideal way to solve some of your organization's biggest business and technology challenges. A private cloud can deliver IT as a service. This helps reduce costs, raise efficiency, and introduce innovative new business models to make your enterprise more agile and efficient while simplifying its operations and infrastructure.

A private cloud is designed to offer the same features and benefits of public cloud systems, but removes a number of objections to the cloud computing model including control over enterprise and customer data, worries about security, and issues connected to regulatory compliance.

Private clouds offer the power, efficiency, and features of a public cloud, with the security, control, and performance of a dedicated environment. But private clouds are complex to operate. They require experts who understand cloud architecture and know how to upgrade, patch, secure, monitor, and scale a cloud environment.

A private cloud is a software-defined data center that combines essential hardware and other computing resources into a unified virtualized unit. A private cloud’s layer of hardware and networking abstraction – again, provided by software – enables enterprises to scale and provision resources more dynamically than is possible with traditional hardware-centric computing environments.

In contrast to public cloud computing, a private cloud is typically hosted within a company’s firewalls. Alternately, some companies host their private cloud with an external third party provider, which allows these deployments to tap into external compute resources on an on-demand basis.

Ideally, a private cloud allows businesses significant cost savings over legacy hardware-based deployments. It also enables far greater flexibility, and – in contrast to a public cloud – much greater security and privacy.

With a managed private cloud by Rackspace, we take care of the infrastructure and management, giving you the cloud expertise you need so you can focus on your core business.Extend the value of your existing collaboration investments. Cisco open and interoperable solutions allow you to take advantage of new cloud services and ‘cloud-connect’ them with your existing infrastructure. We offer a wide range of solutions from the Cisco Cloud, private cloud solutions, and Cisco Powered cloud services from certified partners.

The face of IT is changing. The public cloud is rapidly expanding, offering software and computing infrastructure on demand, anywhere access from any device, and payment based on usage. It’s increasingly attractive to business units that thrive on innovation, time to market, and bottom-line contribution.

Furthermore, over 70 percent of an IT budget is often spent on maintenance. As a result, data growth remains explosive, infrastructure is under capacity or underutilized, and pressure to lower costs is constant.

Moving from silos to delivering IT from a common, virtualized, self-service pool of resources—a private cloud—benefits the entire organization. However, it also requires new roles, skills, and processes, a robust and secure cloud architecture, worry-free deployment of critical applications, and intelligent metering.

 

Technology Solution

 

EMC Solutions for the Private Cloud enable enterprises to transform and deliver IT-as-as-service (ITaaS) with:

• Greater agility and efficiency – Increase and accelerate business returns with cloud-optimized storage, protection, and resource management, coupled with expert consulting and education.
• Seamless integration – Leverage over 90 points of integration with VMware, proven infrastructures from EMC VSPEX, jointly developed systems from VCE, and expertise in Microsoft, Citrix, Red Hat, and OpenStack virtualization and cloud management.
• Broad trust – Strengthen security, achieve compliance, manage risk, and uphold governance.
• Proven results – Gain from extensive experience delivering private cloud solutions for customers worldwide and within EMC.

Cloud Infrastructure

Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Cloud computing and storage solutions provide users and enterprises with various capabilities to store and process their data in third-party data centers. It relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale, similar to a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network.At the foundation of cloud computing is the broader concept of converged infrastructureand shared services.

Cloud computing, or in simpler shorthand just "the cloud", also focuses on maximizing the effectiveness of the shared resources. Cloud resources are usually not only shared by multiple users but are also dynamically reallocated per demand. This can work for allocating resources to users. For example, a cloud computer facility that serves European users during European business hours with a specific application (e.g., email) may reallocate the same resources to serve North American users during North America's business hours with a different application (e.g., a web server). This approach helps maximize the use of computing power while reducing the overall cost of resources by using less power, air conditioning, rack space, etc. to maintain the system. With cloud computing, multiple users can access a single server to retrieve and update their data without purchasing licenses for different applications.

The term "moving to cloud" also refers to an organization moving away from a traditional CAPEX model (buy the dedicated hardware and depreciate it over a period of time) to the OPEX model (use a shared cloud infrastructure and pay as one uses it).

Proponents claim that cloud computing allows companies to avoid upfront infrastructure costs, and focus on projects that differentiate their businesses instead of on infrastructure.Proponents also claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and enables IT to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand. Cloud providers typically use a "pay as you go" model. This can lead to unexpectedly high charges if administrators do not adapt to the cloud pricing model.

The present availability of high-capacity networks, low-cost computers and storage devices as well as the widespread adoption ofhardware virtualization, service-oriented architecture, and autonomic and utility computing have led to a growth in cloud computing Companies can scale up as computing needs increase and then scale down again as demands decrease.

Cloud vendors are experiencing growth rates of 50% per annum.

The term "moving to cloud" also refers to an organization moving away from a traditional CAPEX model (buy the dedicated hardware and depreciate it over a period of time) to the OPEX model (use a shared cloud infrastructure and pay as one uses it).

Proponents claim that cloud computing allows companies to avoid upfront infrastructure costs, and focus on projects that differentiate their businesses instead of on infrastructure.Proponents also claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and enables IT to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand. Cloud providers typically use a "pay as you go" model. This can lead to unexpectedly high charges if administrators do not adapt to the cloud pricing model.

The present availability of high-capacity networks, low-cost computers and storage devices as well as the widespread adoption ofhardware virtualization, service-oriented architecture, and autonomic and utility computing have led to a growth in cloud computing Companies can scale up as computing needs increase and then scale down again as demands decrease.

Cloud vendors are experiencing growth rates of 50% per annum.

Similar concepts

Cloud computing is the result of the evolution and adoption of existing technologies and paradigms. The goal of cloud computing is to allow users to take benefit from all of these technologies, without the need for deep knowledge about or expertise with each one of them. The cloud aims to cut costs, and helps the users focus on their core business instead of being impeded by IT obstacles^.

The main enabling technology for cloud computing is virtualization. Virtualization software separates a physical computing device into one or more "virtual" devices, each of which can be easily used and managed to perform computing tasks. With operating system–level virtualization essentially creating a scalable system of multiple independent computing devices, idle computing resources can be allocated and used more efficiently. Virtualization provides the agility required to speed up IT operations, and reduces cost by increasing infrastructure utilization. Autonomic computing automates the process through which the user can provision resources on-demand. By minimizing user involvement, automation speeds up the process, reduces labor costs and reduces the possibility of human errors.

Users routinely face difficult business problems. Cloud computing adopts concepts from Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) that can help the user break these problems into services that can be integrated to provide a solution. Cloud computing provides all of its resources as services, and makes use of the well-established standards and best practices gained in the domain of SOA to allow global and easy access to cloud services in a standardized way.

Cloud computing also leverages concepts from utility computing to provide metrics for the services used. Such metrics are at the core of the public cloud pay-per-use models. In addition, measured services are an essential part of the feedback loop in autonomic computing, allowing services to scale on-demand and to perform automatic failure recovery.

Cloud computing is a kind of grid computing; it has evolved by addressing the QoS (quality of service) and reliability problems. Cloud computing provides the tools and technologies to build data/compute intensive parallel applications with much more affordable prices compared to traditional parallel computing techniques.

Cloud computing shares characteristics with:

• Client–server model — Client–server computing refers broadly to any distributed application that distinguishes between service providers (servers) and service requestors (clients).
• Grid computing — "A form of distributed and parallel computing, whereby a 'super and virtual computer' is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely coupled computers acting in concert to perform very large tasks."
• Mainframe computer — Powerful computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as: census; industry and consumer statistics; police and secret intelligence services; enterprise resource planning; and financialtransaction processing.
• Utility computing — The "packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility, such as electricity."
• Peer-to-peer — A distributed architecture without the need for central coordination. Participants are both suppliers and consumers of resources (in contrast to the traditional client–server model).

Characteristics

Cloud computing exhibits the following key characteristics:

• Agility improves with users' ability to re-provision technological infrastructure resources.
• Cost reductions claimed by cloud providers. A public-cloud delivery model converts capital expenditure to operational expenditure.This purportedly lowers barriers to entry, as infrastructure is typically provided by a third party and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Pricing on a utility computing basis is fine-grained, with usage-based options and fewer IT skills are required for implementation (in-house). The e-FISCAL project's state-of-the-art repository contains several articles looking into cost aspects in more detail, most of them concluding that costs savings depend on the type of activities supported and the type of infrastructure available in-house.
• Device and location independence enable users to access systems using a web browser regardless of their location or what device they use (e.g., PC, mobile phone). As infrastructure is off-site (typically provided by a third-party) and accessed via the Internet, users can connect from anywhere.
• Maintenance of cloud computing applications is easier, because they do not need to be installed on each user's computer and can be accessed from different places.
• Multitenancy enables sharing of resources and costs across a large pool of users thus allowing for:
  • centralization of infrastructure in locations with lower costs (such as real estate, electricity, etc.)
  • peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load-levels)
  • utilisation and efficiency improvements for systems that are often only 10–20% utilised.
• Performance is monitored, and consistent and loosely coupled architectures are constructed using web services as the system interface.
• Productivity may be increased when multiple users can work on the same data simultaneously, rather than waiting for it to be saved and emailed. Time may be saved as information does not need to be re-entered when fields are matched, nor do users need to install application software upgrades to their computer.
• Reliability improves with the use of multiple redundant sites, which makes well-designed cloud computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery.
• Scalability and elasticity via dynamic ("on-demand") provisioning of resources on a fine-grained, self-service basis in near real-time (Note, the VM startup time varies by VM type, location, OS and cloud providers without users having to engineer for peak loads.
• Security can improve due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc., but concerns can persist about loss of control over certain sensitive data, and the lack of security for stored kernels. Security is often as good as or better than other traditional systems, in part because providers are able to devote resources to solving security issues that many customers cannot afford to tackle. However, the complexity of security is greatly increased when data is distributed over a wider area or over a greater number of devices, as well as in multi-tenant systems shared by unrelated users. In addition, user access to security audit logsmay be difficult or impossible. Private cloud installations are in part motivated by users' desire to retain control over the infrastructure and avoid losing control of information security.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's definition of cloud computing identifies "five essential characteristics":

On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.

Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations).

Resource pooling. The provider's computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. 

Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time.

Measured service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

Private cloud Companies

Choosing the right private cloud solution is not an easy task. Here's how private cloud options from Microsoft, VMware, OpenStack, CloudStack and Platform9 Private cloud software has to work with the virtualization layer that is providing the resources, enabling a management interface for the self-service aspect along with a management interface for the IT administrator. All of this has to be accomplished at a reasonable price and with adequate support if you plan on making your private cloud a part of your core business strategy. With all software investments today, and especially when it comes to virtualization and cloud software, the additional question of going with open source also has to be taken into consideration with the pros and cons that come with it. Thus below, you'll notice a mix of proprietary as well as open source private cloud options and what each has to offer.compare in terms of management, compatibility, complexity and security.

Microsoft Private Cloud

While Microsoft was a bit late to the virtualization and cloud arena, the software giant has spent considerable resources catching up and leveraging experience to avoid some of the mistakes other vendors in this space have made. Microsoft's private cloud software is part of the System Center 2012 R2 offering. System Center incorporates several products under one umbrella including Virtual Machine Manager, Data Protection Manager, Endpoint protection and Operations Manager.

• Microsoft's System Center will support and centrally manage Windows 2012 Hyper-V hosts along with third party hypervisors from Citrix and VMware; KVM is a notable exception that is not included at this time. While the hypervisors are agnostic, the current lack of active third party network providers, including Cisco, is worth noting and may be limiting to some customers.
• Microsoft's private cloud offering focuses on the application life cycle combined with automation and monitoring in one package. This, coupled with a straightforward ability to create self-service portals based on mature IIS features, helps with the installation process. Leveraging the .NET framework does allow for additional extensions and troubleshooting.
• Security can be leveraged off of existing Active Directory resources without the complexity of setting up single sign on (SSO). However this can open up additional security risks based on existing Windows Server vulnerabilities.
• While the pieces in the package may not go feature for feature when compared to other offerings, the single SKU does make licensing and purchasing easier.

VMware vCloud Suite Private Cloud

VMware is one of the oldest players in the virtualization market and has an established record of performance and reliability. VMware's products have the ability to scale to some of the most demanding workloads. VMware has incorporated several products into its private cloud offering allowing customers to choose ala cart what features they would like to use. VMware's vCloud Suite comes in three different versions (Standard, Advanced and Enterprise) with each incorporating additional products and features.

• VMware vCloud Suite does support other hypervisors, including Hyper-V and KVM, however extensive single pane of glass management is not advertised, as the favored hypervisor is ESXi.
• The Advanced edition of vCloud Suites adds vRealize Business for vSphere and Enterprise version includes vCenter Site Recovery Manager on top of the vRealize Business Suite. vRealize Business offers cost, usage and metering ability while vCenter Site Recovery Manager is policy-based disaster recovery.
• The vCloud Suite is packaged and requires license upgrades together as a single entity, however it is a collection of separate products, which can lead to confusion with support, and installation when compared to other offerings. 
• Frequent product name changes lead to confusion on what the products do, which ones are needed, upgradable or even owned in some cases.
• vCloud has the ability to integrate with VMware's software defined networking offering NSX, however this is an additional licensing fee with all versions of vCloud.
• Established enterprise class security at the hypervisor and network layers for easy user integration with Active Directory single sign on and its complexities are required.
• Support for VMware Virtual SAN and OpenStack allow for flexibility in both storage and third party cloud integration tools. 

OpenStack Private Cloud

OpenStack is one of the most popular open source cloud operating options today. It has the ability to manage compute, storage and networking and deploy them is an easy to use, but somewhat feature limited dashboard. Unlike VMware and Microsoft, OpenStack does not have its own hypervisor. 

• OpenStack can be used with VMware's ESXi, Microsoft's Hyper-V, or Citrix Xen, however it is most often used with KVM, which is also open source. With more vendors including OpenStack APIs this will encourage more adoption.
• OpenStack supports a wide range of software and hardware due to its open source nature. This allows for flexible architecture that can support both legacy and new hardware platforms.
• While the capital cost of the software is free (since it's open source) the soft cost in training your IT staff will have to be accounted for. 
• Similar to other open source offerings, a community support model is in place over paid maintenance, this may require trained staff for immediate support needs.
• With so many community developers and quality feedback from users the complexity of installation and operation is simpler than might be expected. OpenStack is directly focused on the cloud platform and does not have additional pieces which reduces complexity.

Platform9 OpenStack Private Cloud

Platform9 is a private cloud provider based on OpenStack that does not reside onsite. Platform9 uses an OpenStack as a service model to allow organizations to manage their private clouds from an external cloud. While this might seem a bit unusual for a private cloud solution, the key point to remember is that your data still resides inside your data center, it's simply the management piece that is external to your company.

• Platform9 currently supports the KVM hypervisor with VMware ESXi in beta testing. Currently there are no plans for Hyper-V or Citrix Xen listed.
• Being a hosted solution there is no software to install or upgrade. Platform9 handles all patches and upgrades to the OpenStack core.
• Simplified user portal, image management and infrastructure discovery allow for reduced administrative overhead while leveraging the scalability and reliability of OpenStack.
• Policy based deployments with infrastructure monitoring brings many of the popular public cloud features into the private cloud space without limited complexity.
• No capital costs to get started; the solution is priced as a monthly service fee.

Apache CloudStack Private Cloud

Another contender in the open source private cloud space is Apache's CloudStack. The CloudStack solution supports a wide range of hypervisors from VMware, Microsoft, Citrix and KVM. CloudStack is offered as a complete solution minus the hypervisor, allowing companies to have a robust management interface, usage metering and image deployment. Storage tiering and Active Directory are also included with limited software defined networking.

• Unlike OpenStack, which focuses on the core cloud aspect, CloudStack is looking to provide everything under the single open source umbrella.
• CloudStack is an economical approach to the private cloud with many popular features included. One concern is the quality of those features, along with the support that exists with open source software.
• It includes a Java-based management agent, which may cause some concerns regarding performance, security and version splintering.

Private Cloud Feature Comparison

Microsoft Private Cloud
Compatibility	Single pane of glass for Hyper-V, VMware ESXi and Citrix Xen servers, although detail of management support is not clear.
Complexity	Single product makes it easy (but expensive) to purchase. Because System Center contains so many related products, installation and upgrades can be complex.
Security	Relies on the existing Active Directory / IIS frameworks allowing for ease of operations.
Summary	Microsoft's private cloud with System Center is a good option businesses looking to get started with a private cloud. Cost is packaged, but System Center itself is a very complex product and a bit large in overhead when compared to some of the other offerings.
VMware vCloud Suite Private Cloud
Compatibility	Ability to manage top three hypervisors, but limited information on to what detail.
Complexity	Suite variants with add-ons can make purchasing complex. Products are separate features making installing and upgrades more complex.
Security	Mature security in core products, integration with Active Directory requires single sign on.
Summary	VMware's vCloud Suite is a collection of best of breed technologies that allow for enterprise class performance, reliability and scalability. The ala cart approach combined with frequent name changes does increase the complexity for licensing, purchasing, installing and maintaining, even as the majority of products are bundled in a loose collection.
OpenStack Private Cloud
Compatibility	Primary focus is on KVM but VMware's hypervisor is gaining support. Limited attention on Citrix Xen and Microsoft Hyper-V.
Complexity	Fairly easy to get started with community created documentation.
Security	Security is based on security domains and trusts. Third-party LDAP server can do authentication; support for multi-factor authentication is available as well.
Summary	OpenStack is a private cloud offering that can scale from SMBs to larger enterprises. While there is concern over support with open source software, a robust community does exist. With the open source nature of OpenStack, several vendors have used it as their cloud layer, adding additional features and functions.
Platform9 OpenStack Private Cloud
Compatibility	Official support for KVM; VMware hypervisor support is in beta. No published plans for Citrix Xen or Microsoft Hyper-V at this time.
Complexity	Quick and easy to get started with as there is no software to install.
Security	Management is being done offsite, which could present security concerns for some organizations.
Summary	Platform9 is the cloud platform for the folks that want many of the features of a cloud without the management complexity. While you won't find some of the advanced features that other vendors include, such as software defined networking, Platform9 will appeal to those looking to get started without the lead-time and costs of many of the other solutions. The biggest hurtle with Platform9 today is the lack of full VMware and Hyper-V support.
Apache CloudStack Private Cloud
Compatibility	Supports VMware ESXi, Citrix Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V and KVM. No single pane of glass for detailed management.
Complexity	Multiple products under a single open source umbrella may present challenges for installation and configuration, coupled with primary support being forum based is cause for concerns.
Security	While support for Active Directory exists, along with security zones, the inclusion of Java-based management agents may present additional security concerns.
Summary	CloudStack is a complete open source private cloud offering that can scale up to enterprise needs. However, with limited customer references, until CloudStack receives more exposure in the enterprise space it may be more suited for smaller or classroom deployments.