MUMBAI, INDIA: Despite the economies of scale offered by public cloud providers, private cloud services will prevail for the foreseeable future while public cloud offerings mature, according to Gartner Inc.

Through 2012, IT organisations will spend more money on private cloud computing investments than on offerings from public cloud providers.

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Gartner defines public cloud computing as a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to external customers using Internet technologies.

Private cloud computing is defined as a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to internal customers using Internet technologies

Tom Bittman, vice president and distinguished analyst, Gartner, said: "The hype of cloud computing is that existing IT architectures and processes can be simply replaced by the cloud. The reality of the future IT organization, however, is somewhat a combination. Larger enterprises will continue to have an IT organization that manages and deploys IT resources internally, some of which will be 'private clouds.' IT organizations will also take on IT service sourcing responsibility, determining when to leverage external providers, when to deploy internally, and when to leverage both for specific services."

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Private cloud services will be a stepping stone to future public cloud services and, over time, will span both private and public cloud resources in a hybrid manner. For many large enterprises, private cloud services will therefore be required for many years, perhaps decades, as public cloud offerings mature.

Gartner analysts said appropriate investments in private cloud computing will also make it easier for enterprises to gradually use public cloud services in the future. For services destined to be cloud at some point in time, enterprises should evaluate the return on investment from developing private cloud services, while waiting for external offerings to mature.

"Many of the investments in private cloud computing will prepare the enterprise for public cloud computing. These investments are not just technology changes — they are also process, cultural and business interface changes," said Bittman. "Making these changes sooner rather than later will help enterprises to take better cloud sourcing decisions and potentially make for an easier transition to public cloud computing."