Private Cloud Computing: A Comprehensive Analysis of Its Definition, Advantages, Implementation Strategies, and the Digital Sovereignty Movement

Abstract

Cloud computing has fundamentally reshaped the landscape of information technology, offering diverse deployment models to meet evolving organizational demands. Among these, the private cloud stands as a pivotal paradigm, distinguished by its exclusive dedication to a single entity, thereby prioritizing an unparalleled degree of security, granular control, and bespoke customization. This comprehensive research paper undertakes an exhaustive exploration of private cloud computing, meticulously delineating its core characteristics, architectural underpinnings, and strategic advantages when juxtaposed against the widely adopted public cloud services. Furthermore, it delves into the multifaceted strategies for its implementation, ranging from traditional on-premises deployments to managed and hosted models. A significant focus is placed on the burgeoning global imperative of digital sovereignty, illustrating how private cloud solutions serve as a critical enabler for organizations seeking to maintain authoritative control over their digital assets and data within specific jurisdictional boundaries. By examining these intricate facets, this paper aims to furnish a profound and exhaustive understanding of private cloud computing’s enduring significance and its indispensable role in navigating the complexities of the contemporary digital ecosystem.

Many thanks to our sponsor Esdebe who helped us prepare this research report.

1. Introduction

The advent of cloud computing has heralded a transformative era in how organizations architect, deploy, and manage their information technology resources. This paradigm shift, rooted in the principles of on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service, has enabled unprecedented levels of scalability, flexibility, and operational efficiency. The early 21st century witnessed the conceptualization and commercialization of cloud services, driven by the increasing need for agile IT infrastructure capable of adapting to dynamic business requirements. Initially, public cloud offerings gained prominence due to their low entry barriers and perceived simplicity, allowing organizations to consume compute, storage, and networking resources as utilities over the internet.

However, as enterprises matured in their cloud adoption journey, and as regulatory landscapes grew more stringent, a nuanced understanding of cloud deployment models emerged. The primary models—public, private, and hybrid clouds—each address distinct organizational needs and strategic imperatives. Public clouds, characterized by their multi-tenant architecture, provide shared computational resources accessible via the internet, offering unparalleled scalability and cost-effectiveness for non-sensitive workloads. Conversely, private clouds offer a dedicated, isolated environment tailored exclusively to a single organization, providing a fortress-like enclosure for critical data and applications. The hybrid cloud model represents a strategic amalgamation of both public and private clouds, allowing workloads to seamlessly traverse between environments based on factors such as sensitivity, performance requirements, and cost optimization.

This paper dedicates its focus to a granular analysis of private cloud computing. It seeks to unpack its precise definition, moving beyond a simplistic understanding to explore the intricate technological stack and operational models that underpin it. A significant portion of this research is dedicated to systematically analyzing the compelling advantages that private clouds offer over public cloud counterparts, particularly concerning security, governance, and performance predictability. Furthermore, it examines the diverse array of implementation strategies available to organizations considering a private cloud adoption, ranging from the capital-intensive on-premises build-out to various outsourced and managed solutions. Crucially, this paper explores the burgeoning global movement towards digital sovereignty, illuminating how private cloud computing serves as an indispensable technological cornerstone for organizations striving to maintain autonomous control over their digital assets and adhere to increasingly strict data residency and privacy regulations. By meticulously dissecting these multifaceted dimensions, this research aims to provide a comprehensive and actionable framework for understanding the strategic implications and operational realities of private cloud computing in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Many thanks to our sponsor Esdebe who helped us prepare this research report.

2. Defining Private Cloud Computing

A private cloud is a sophisticated cloud computing environment meticulously designed and operated for the exclusive use of a single organization. This exclusivity is the defining characteristic that fundamentally differentiates it from the multi-tenant architecture of public clouds, where resources are shared among numerous clients. While both public and private clouds leverage virtualization, automation, and self-service capabilities, the private cloud ensures a dedicated pool of computational resources—including servers, storage, and network infrastructure—that is not shared with any other entity. This dedication translates into an unparalleled degree of isolation, security, and customization, allowing the owning organization to tailor the environment precisely to its unique operational requirements, security policies, and compliance mandates.

Beyond merely dedicated hardware, a private cloud encompasses a dedicated control plane, network segmentation, and security policies that are specific to the single organization. It represents a shift from simply virtualizing existing infrastructure to building an agile, scalable, and automated environment that mirrors the benefits of public clouds but within an organization’s proprietary boundaries. The underlying technologies that enable a private cloud are complex and layered, typically comprising:

• Virtualization: This foundational technology allows physical hardware resources (CPU, RAM, storage, network) to be abstracted and provisioned as virtual machines (VMs) or containers. Hypervisors such as VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, or open-source solutions like KVM are critical components, enabling multiple isolated virtual environments to run concurrently on a single physical server.
• Orchestration and Automation: Central to the cloud paradigm, orchestration tools automate the deployment, scaling, and management of cloud resources and applications. Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs) or open-source solutions like OpenStack provide self-service portals, API access, and automated workflows for provisioning virtual machines, storage, and networking services, significantly reducing manual intervention and accelerating service delivery.
• Software-Defined Networking (SDN): SDN decouples the control plane from the data plane, allowing network configurations to be centrally managed and dynamically provisioned through software. This enables greater network agility, micro-segmentation for enhanced security, and rapid network provisioning within the private cloud environment.
• Software-Defined Storage (SDS): SDS abstracts storage hardware, allowing storage resources to be managed, provisioned, and scaled programmatically. This provides flexibility, optimizes storage utilization, and enables advanced features like data tiering, snapshots, and replication across various storage types.
• Self-Service Portal: A key component enabling end-users or development teams within the organization to provision and manage their own resources on-demand, reflecting the agility seen in public cloud environments.

Private cloud environments can be architecturally diverse. They can be hosted on-premises, residing entirely within an organization’s own data center, where the organization bears full responsibility for procurement, installation, maintenance, and management of all hardware and software components. This model offers the highest degree of control and security. Alternatively, a private cloud can be hosted externally by a third-party provider, often referred to as a hosted private cloud. In this scenario, the provider manages the underlying physical infrastructure, but the cloud environment remains exclusively dedicated to a single client, ensuring logical isolation and often meeting stringent compliance requirements without the significant capital expenditure and operational burden of an on-premises deployment.

It is crucial to distinguish a ‘private cloud’ from a ‘Virtual Private Cloud’ (VPC) offered by public cloud providers. A VPC is a logically isolated section of a public cloud, where users can launch resources into a virtual network that they define. While a VPC provides a degree of network isolation and control within a public cloud, it still operates on shared underlying physical infrastructure, which inherently differs from the dedicated physical resources and complete organizational control characteristic of a true private cloud environment. The key distinction of a private cloud, whether on-premises or externally hosted, consistently lies in the unwavering exclusivity of its underlying resources and the comprehensive level of autonomy and governance retained by the organization over its entire IT environment.

Many thanks to our sponsor Esdebe who helped us prepare this research report.

3. Advantages of Private Cloud Over Public Cloud

While public cloud services offer compelling benefits such as elasticity and cost efficiency for many workloads, private clouds present distinct advantages for organizations with specific requirements related to security, compliance, performance, and control. These benefits often justify the higher upfront investment and operational complexity.

3.1 Enhanced Security and Privacy

The most compelling advantage of a private cloud lies in its superior security posture and inherent privacy safeguards. Unlike public cloud environments where resources are pooled and shared among multiple tenants, private clouds ensure absolute isolation of an organization’s data and applications. This physical and logical segregation significantly reduces the attack surface and mitigates the ‘noisy neighbor’ phenomenon, where the activities or vulnerabilities of one tenant could potentially impact another.

Within a private cloud, organizations possess complete autonomy to implement stringent, customized security measures that precisely align with their unique risk profiles and regulatory obligations. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Dedicated Security Devices: The deployment of dedicated firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) at the network perimeter and within the cloud fabric, all exclusively configured and managed by the organization.
• Granular Access Controls: Implementation of highly refined Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) policies and Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions, ensuring that only authorized personnel have access to specific resources and data, tailored down to the individual server or application level.
• Advanced Encryption: Enforcement of robust data encryption strategies, including encryption at rest for stored data (e.g., full disk encryption, database encryption) and encryption in transit for data traversing networks (e.g., TLS/SSL, VPNs). Organizations retain full control over encryption keys, a critical element for data sovereignty and privacy.
• Customized Security Policies: The ability to define and enforce bespoke security policies, network segmentation, and micro-segmentation strategies that go beyond typical public cloud offerings, allowing for hyper-specific protection of sensitive workloads.
• Physical Security: For on-premises private clouds, organizations have direct control over the physical security of their data centers, including access controls, surveillance, and environmental monitoring, providing an additional layer of protection that is impossible to achieve in a public cloud scenario.
• Compliance Facilitation: Industries subject to stringent regulatory frameworks, such as healthcare (HIPAA), finance (PCI DSS, SOX), government (NIST), and general data protection (GDPR, CCPA), find private clouds invaluable. The dedicated environment simplifies compliance audits by providing clear data residency, isolation, and control over security configurations, making it easier to demonstrate adherence to specific mandates regarding data handling, audit trails, and security protocols.

By centralizing control over the entire security stack and eliminating the multi-tenancy risk, private clouds offer an unparalleled level of confidence in data protection and privacy, a critical factor for organizations handling highly sensitive or confidential information.

3.2 Greater Control Over Data and Infrastructure

The pervasive control afforded by a private cloud is a paramount advantage, empowering organizations with comprehensive autonomy over their entire IT environment, from the bare metal to the application layer. This level of governance is unattainable in a public cloud setting, where the provider dictates much of the underlying infrastructure and operational parameters.

In a private cloud, organizations can meticulously customize their infrastructure to meet precise operational demands, performance benchmarks, and internal governance policies. This extensive control manifests in several key areas:

• Hardware and Software Customization: Organizations can select specific hardware configurations, including processor types, memory capacities, storage technologies (e.g., NVMe, all-flash arrays), and networking gear, to optimize performance for specialized workloads like high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) training, or large-scale database operations. Similarly, there is complete freedom in choosing operating systems, hypervisors (e.g., VMware, OpenStack, Hyper-V), middleware, and application stacks.
• Network Configuration Flexibility: Full control over network topology, IP addressing schemes, routing protocols, VLANs, VPNs, and integration with existing on-premises network infrastructure. This allows for seamless extension of the corporate network into the private cloud, maintaining consistent security policies and connectivity.
• Data Residency and Localization: A crucial aspect for global organizations is the ability to dictate the physical location where data is stored and processed. Private clouds ensure data residency within specific geographic boundaries, which is essential for compliance with national and regional data protection laws (e.g., GDPR in Europe, various data localization laws in China, Russia, India). Organizations can definitively assert ‘our data is in our data center, in our country,’ providing robust assurance to regulators and clients.
• Integration with Legacy Systems: Many enterprises operate with a significant footprint of legacy applications and systems that are not easily migrated to public cloud environments due to architectural complexities, licensing restrictions, or specific hardware dependencies. A private cloud provides a controlled environment that can be meticulously configured to support and integrate with these existing systems, facilitating a gradual modernization journey without immediate, disruptive rip-and-replace strategies.
• Patching and Update Schedules: Organizations retain full control over when and how system patches, software updates, and security fixes are applied, allowing them to thoroughly test changes in a controlled environment before deployment to production, minimizing downtime and unexpected disruptions.
• Auditability and Visibility: Private clouds offer unparalleled visibility into the entire infrastructure stack, enabling detailed logging, monitoring, and auditing capabilities necessary for compliance, performance analysis, and security forensics. This granular insight supports robust governance frameworks and accountability.

This comprehensive control empowers organizations to construct an IT environment that precisely mirrors their strategic objectives, operational methodologies, and risk appetite, fostering an environment of stability, predictability, and tailored efficiency.

3.3 Predictable Performance and Reliability

One of the critical differentiators for performance-sensitive applications is the predictable and consistent performance offered by private clouds. In multi-tenant public cloud environments, resource contention, often referred to as the ‘noisy neighbor’ problem, can lead to unpredictable performance fluctuations. When multiple tenants share the same physical server, network, or storage resources, the intense demands of one tenant can degrade the performance experienced by others.

Private clouds eliminate this inherent risk by dedicating all resources exclusively to a single organization. This ensures that critical applications receive the necessary computing power, memory, storage I/O, and network bandwidth without interference or competition from external entities. The predictable performance attributes include:

• Dedicated Resource Allocation: Organizations can precisely allocate CPU, RAM, and storage resources to specific applications based on their known requirements, guaranteeing consistent performance levels. This is particularly vital for latency-sensitive applications (e.g., real-time trading platforms, voice/video conferencing, gaming), high-transaction databases, or compute-intensive workloads (e.g., scientific simulations, big data analytics).
• Consistent Network Latency and Throughput: With dedicated network infrastructure, organizations experience stable and predictable network latency and bandwidth within their private cloud and to their external network connections. This is crucial for applications requiring low-latency communication between components or high-throughput data transfers.
• Reliable Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Organizations have direct control over their infrastructure, allowing them to define and enforce internal SLAs for application uptime, response times, and data availability. While public clouds offer SLAs, their performance can still be subject to factors beyond a single tenant’s control. In a private cloud, the organization has the direct levers to ensure their SLAs are met, often surpassing typical public cloud guarantees for specific bespoke environments.
• Optimized Workload Placement: The ability to manually or automatically place workloads on specific hardware configurations allows for fine-tuning performance. For instance, high-IOPS databases can be placed on servers with NVMe storage, while batch processing jobs can leverage high-core count CPUs.
• Robust Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: Private clouds, by virtue of their dedicated and controlled nature, facilitate more robust and tailored disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) planning. Organizations can implement specific replication strategies, failover mechanisms, and recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) that are meticulously designed for their unique needs, often across geographically dispersed private cloud instances or in combination with public cloud for hybrid DR strategies. The deterministic nature of resource availability ensures DR drills are predictable and effective.

This inherent predictability in performance and reliability is a significant operational advantage, reducing the risk of application slowdowns, enhancing user experience, and bolstering overall business stability.

3.4 Cost Predictability and Optimization

While private clouds typically necessitate a significant upfront capital expenditure (CapEx) for hardware, software licenses, and data center infrastructure, they often offer superior cost predictability and potential long-term savings for specific workload profiles compared to the variable operational expenditure (OpEx) model of public clouds.

The financial predictability stems from several factors:

• Fixed Costs vs. Variable Costs: Private clouds involve a largely fixed cost structure over the lifecycle of the hardware. After the initial investment, ongoing costs are primarily related to power, cooling, maintenance, and staffing. This contrasts sharply with public cloud’s pay-as-you-go model, where costs can fluctuate dramatically based on usage, data transfer volumes (egress fees), and dynamic pricing structures, making budgeting challenging for unpredictable workloads.
• Avoidance of Egress Fees: One of the often-overlooked but significant costs in public clouds is data egress fees—charges incurred when data moves out of the public cloud provider’s network. For organizations with high volumes of data transfer (e.g., data analytics, content delivery, backups to on-premises systems), these fees can accumulate rapidly. In a private cloud, data transfer within the organization’s network or to trusted partners does not incur such charges, leading to substantial savings.
• Long-Term Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): For stable, high-utilization workloads that run continuously over several years, a private cloud can often demonstrate a lower TCO. After the initial capital investment is recouped, the operational costs can be significantly less than continuous public cloud subscription fees, especially for large-scale deployments. Organizations can depreciate assets over their useful life, providing tax advantages.
• Optimized Resource Utilization: With full control over the infrastructure, organizations can implement sophisticated resource management and chargeback models internally. They can ensure optimal utilization of purchased hardware by dynamically allocating resources, rightsizing virtual machines, and implementing efficient power management strategies. This prevents the over-provisioning that can occur in public clouds when users provision resources ‘just in case’ rather than precisely based on need.
• No Vendor Lock-in Penalties: While not a direct cost, the avoidance of vendor lock-in in a private cloud reduces potential future costs associated with migrating off a public cloud platform, which can involve significant re-architecting, data transfer fees, and professional services.

However, realizing cost predictability and optimization in a private cloud demands meticulous planning, accurate capacity forecasting, and proficient operational management. Organizations must carefully weigh their workload characteristics, financial models (CapEx vs. OpEx), and long-term strategic objectives when evaluating the cost benefits of a private cloud solution.

Many thanks to our sponsor Esdebe who helped us prepare this research report.

4. Implementation Strategies for Private Cloud

The decision to implement a private cloud involves choosing from several distinct strategies, each with its own implications for capital investment, operational responsibility, control, and required technical expertise. The selection of an appropriate strategy is contingent upon an organization’s specific needs, existing infrastructure, budget constraints, risk appetite, and long-term strategic vision.

4.1 On-Premises Deployment

On-premises deployment, often considered the ‘traditional’ private cloud model, involves an organization building, owning, and managing its entire private cloud infrastructure within its own physical data center facilities. This strategy offers the highest degree of control and customization but also demands the most significant capital expenditure and operational burden.

Components and Requirements:

• Data Center Infrastructure: Requires dedicated physical space, robust power supply (including uninterruptible power supplies and generators), efficient cooling systems, fire suppression, and physical security measures.
• Hardware Procurement: Substantial investment in servers (compute), storage arrays (SAN, NAS, object storage), high-speed networking equipment (switches, routers, firewalls), and cabling.
• Software Licensing: Acquisition of licenses for hypervisors (e.g., VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Red Hat Virtualization), operating systems, cloud management platforms (CMPs like VMware vRealize Suite, OpenStack distributions, Microsoft Azure Stack Hub), orchestration tools, and various monitoring and security software.
• Skilled Personnel: A highly competent in-house IT team is indispensable, including network engineers, system administrators, virtualization specialists, storage architects, cloud architects, security analysts, and automation experts. These teams are responsible for design, deployment, configuration, ongoing maintenance, patching, upgrades, and troubleshooting.

Advantages:

• Maximum Control: Full control over every aspect of the infrastructure, from hardware selection and configuration to network topology and security policies.
• Enhanced Security: Data remains within the organization’s physical and logical boundaries, simplifying compliance with strict data residency laws and allowing for tailored, deeply integrated security measures.
• Predictable Performance: Dedicated resources ensure consistent performance for critical workloads without ‘noisy neighbor’ issues.
• Long-Term Cost Efficiency: For stable, high-utilization workloads, the CapEx model can lead to lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over extended periods compared to ongoing OpEx of public clouds.

Disadvantages:

• High Initial Investment: Significant upfront capital outlay required for hardware, software, and data center build-out.
• Operational Complexity: Demanding ongoing management, maintenance, patching, and troubleshooting. Requires a large and skilled IT team.
• Scalability Limitations: Scaling up requires additional hardware procurement and deployment, which can be time-consuming and expensive, limiting rapid elasticity compared to public clouds.
• Technology Obsolescence: The organization bears the risk and cost of hardware and software obsolescence and refresh cycles.

4.2 Hosted Private Cloud

A hosted private cloud, also known as an off-premises private cloud, involves outsourcing the management and often the ownership of the physical infrastructure to a third-party service provider. In this model, the provider provisions a dedicated cloud environment (servers, storage, networking) for a single client within their own data center, which is typically designed with enterprise-grade security and reliability.

Model Overview:

• The service provider owns and maintains the physical hardware, data center facilities, and sometimes even the hypervisor layer.
• The client is granted exclusive access to a dedicated logical and often physical environment, ensuring resource isolation.
• Management responsibilities can vary, but typically the provider handles the underlying infrastructure, while the client manages their operating systems, applications, and sometimes the cloud management platform.

Advantages:

• Reduced CapEx: Shifts significant capital expenditure to operational expenditure, as the organization does not need to purchase and maintain physical hardware.
• Faster Deployment: Providers can deploy private cloud environments much more quickly than an organization building one from scratch.
• Reduced Operational Burden: The provider is responsible for hardware maintenance, power, cooling, physical security, and often basic infrastructure management.
• Expert Management: Leverage the provider’s specialized expertise in data center operations, hardware management, and cloud infrastructure.
• High Security and Compliance: Benefits from the provider’s enterprise-grade security infrastructure and certifications, while still maintaining logical isolation for data privacy and regulatory compliance.

Disadvantages:

• Less Control than On-Premises: While dedicated, the organization has less direct control over the underlying physical infrastructure and sometimes the hypervisor layer compared to an on-premises deployment.
• Dependency on Provider: Reliance on the third-party provider’s service quality, uptime, and security practices.
• Potential Vendor Lock-in: While not as severe as public cloud, migrating from one hosted private cloud provider to another can still be complex.
• Network Latency: Data transit to and from the hosted private cloud can introduce latency, depending on network connectivity and geographic distance.

4.3 Managed Private Cloud

A managed private cloud is a hybrid approach where a third-party managed service provider (MSP) takes on the responsibility for the day-to-day operations and management of the private cloud infrastructure on behalf of the organization. This model can apply to either an on-premises private cloud owned by the organization or a hosted private cloud.

Model Overview:

• The organization typically owns or leases the underlying infrastructure (whether on-premises or at a co-location facility).
• The MSP provides specialized services, including monitoring, patching, software updates, security management, performance tuning, backup, and disaster recovery. They essentially act as an extended IT arm.

Advantages:

• Balance of Control and Convenience: Organizations retain ownership and high control over their infrastructure and data, while offloading the complexities of daily management.
• Access to Expertise: Leverages the MSP’s specialized cloud engineering and operational expertise without the need to hire and retain expensive in-house talent.
• Focus on Core Competencies: Frees up internal IT staff to focus on strategic initiatives and application development rather than routine infrastructure management.
• Improved Efficiency and Reliability: MSPs often have mature operational processes, tools, and 24/7 support, leading to higher efficiency, uptime, and faster problem resolution.
• Predictable OpEx: Costs are often based on a fixed monthly service fee, providing budget predictability for operational expenses.

Disadvantages:

• Dependency on MSP: The quality of service is highly dependent on the MSP’s capabilities, responsiveness, and security practices.
• Reduced Direct Control: While owning the infrastructure, direct operational control is delegated to the MSP.
• Potential for Misalignment: Requires clear Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and strong communication to ensure MSP objectives align with organizational needs.
• Additional Cost: Incurs the cost of the managed service in addition to infrastructure costs.

4.4 Bare-Metal Cloud / Private Cloud as a Service (PCaaS)

These represent more recent evolutions, blurring the lines between traditional private clouds and cloud-native services.

• Bare-Metal Cloud: This model offers dedicated physical servers that can be provisioned on-demand, often with cloud-like APIs and automation. It’s essentially Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) but with dedicated physical hardware instead of virtualized instances. It’s suitable for workloads requiring extreme performance, specific hardware configurations, or direct access to the underlying hardware (e.g., for certain licensing models, GPU-intensive AI/ML workloads, or specific hypervisors not typically offered by public clouds). It provides some of the benefits of a private cloud without the full ownership and management burden.
• Private Cloud as a Service (PCaaS): This is an umbrella term for providers offering complete private cloud environments, including the underlying infrastructure, hypervisor, and cloud management platform, delivered as a fully managed service. The customer interacts with a self-service portal and APIs, similar to a public cloud, but the entire environment is dedicated and isolated. This is a high-level abstraction designed to offer private cloud benefits with minimal operational overhead for the client.

4.5 Hybrid Cloud and Private Cloud’s Role

Increasingly, organizations are adopting hybrid cloud strategies, where a private cloud serves as the core foundational layer, seamlessly integrated with one or more public cloud environments. This approach allows organizations to:

• Maintain Control of Sensitive Data: Keep mission-critical applications and highly sensitive data within the secure, controlled confines of the private cloud.
• Leverage Public Cloud Elasticity: Utilize public cloud resources for bursting workloads during peak demand, developing new applications, or for less sensitive, non-critical workloads.
• Facilitate Disaster Recovery: Use public cloud as a cost-effective disaster recovery site for private cloud workloads.
• Optimize Costs: Run predictable, steady-state workloads in the private cloud for long-term cost efficiency, while paying for burstable or temporary capacity in the public cloud on demand.

Tools and platforms like Kubernetes (for container orchestration), VMware Tanzu, Red Hat OpenShift, and various hybrid cloud management platforms are crucial for building and managing these heterogeneous environments, enabling consistent operations and application portability across private and public cloud boundaries.

The choice of implementation strategy is a complex decision, necessitating a thorough assessment of technical capabilities, financial models, regulatory imperatives, and long-term business objectives. Many organizations find value in evolving from an on-premises private cloud to a managed or hybrid model as their cloud maturity grows.

Many thanks to our sponsor Esdebe who helped us prepare this research report.

5. The Digital Sovereignty Movement and Private Cloud

Digital sovereignty has emerged as a critical global imperative, reflecting a growing desire by nations, organizations, and individuals to exercise greater control over their digital data, infrastructure, and technology, free from undue external influence or control. This movement is driven by escalating concerns over data privacy, national security, economic independence, and the perceived dominance of a few large, typically US-based, public cloud providers. In this context, private cloud solutions are increasingly viewed as a foundational technology for achieving and safeguarding digital sovereignty.

5.1 Data Privacy and Compliance

The nexus between private cloud computing and data privacy and compliance is particularly strong. As geopolitical landscapes shift and data protection regulations become more numerous and stringent, organizations face an escalating imperative to demonstrate explicit control over where their data resides and how it is processed. Private clouds offer a robust solution by enabling organizations to store and manage data within their own jurisdiction or within a specific, trusted legal framework, ensuring strict adherence to local and international data protection laws.

Key regulations driving this need include:

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union: GDPR mandates strict rules on how personal data is collected, processed, and stored for EU citizens. Crucially, it includes provisions on data transfers outside the EU, often requiring robust legal mechanisms and ensuring equivalent levels of protection. By keeping data within an EU-based private cloud, organizations simplify compliance by ensuring data residency and control under EU law.
• California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) in the United States: These state-level laws grant consumers significant rights over their personal information and impose obligations on businesses regarding data collection, use, and sharing.
• Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD) in Brazil: Similar to GDPR, LGPD governs the processing of personal data and emphasizes data localization.
• China’s Cybersecurity Law and Data Security Law: These laws impose extensive requirements on network operators and critical information infrastructure operators, including data localization for certain types of data and strict cross-border data transfer rules, making private cloud or in-country hosted solutions often mandatory for foreign businesses operating in China.
• Industry-Specific Regulations: Sectors like healthcare (HIPAA in the US), finance (PCI DSS globally, various national banking regulations), and government (NIST frameworks, CMMC in the US) have highly specific requirements regarding data isolation, access controls, audit trails, and data residency. Private clouds facilitate the implementation of these granular controls and provide the necessary auditability to demonstrate compliance.

Private clouds provide a clear lineage of data control and custody. Organizations can unequivocally state that ‘our data never leaves our sovereign territory,’ ‘our data is never intermingled with other entities,’ and ‘we control all access and encryption mechanisms.’ This capability is not just about technical control but also about legal and political control, significantly simplifying regulatory compliance and mitigating the risks associated with extraterritorial legal assertions (e.g., the US CLOUD Act, which could compel US cloud providers to hand over data stored abroad).

Moreover, the comprehensive audit trails, granular access logs, and complete visibility into the infrastructure stack within a private cloud environment are invaluable for demonstrating compliance during regulatory audits. Organizations can quickly produce evidence of their data handling practices, security measures, and adherence to specific policy requirements.

5.2 Reducing Dependence on Public Cloud Providers

The digital sovereignty movement also emphasizes reducing strategic dependence on a limited number of dominant public cloud providers, primarily from a single geopolitical region. This concern is multi-faceted:

• Vendor Lock-in: Public cloud services often rely on proprietary APIs, management tools, and service integrations, making it challenging and costly to migrate applications and data to another provider or back to an on-premises environment. This ‘vendor lock-in’ can limit an organization’s agility, negotiating power, and long-term strategic flexibility.
• Geopolitical Risks: Concentrating critical national infrastructure or sensitive enterprise data within public clouds operated by foreign entities introduces geopolitical risks. In times of international tension, there are concerns about data access, censorship, or service disruption influenced by foreign governments.
• Economic Impact: Relying heavily on foreign public cloud providers can lead to a continuous outflow of capital, potentially hindering the development of domestic cloud capabilities and digital industries.
• Innovation Control: Organizations may prefer to maintain greater control over their technology stack, allowing them to innovate on their own terms rather than being constrained by a public cloud provider’s roadmap or service offerings.

By adopting private cloud solutions, organizations can mitigate these risks. They foster internal technical expertise, invest in domestic IT infrastructure, and develop open-source or open-standard cloud platforms (e.g., OpenStack, Kubernetes-based private clouds) that promote portability and avoid proprietary dependencies. This strategic autonomy enables organizations to make technology choices based purely on their business and technical needs, rather than being dictated by external vendor ecosystems. It allows for the establishment of a ‘trusted computing base’ within national or organizational boundaries, reinforcing self-reliance and resilience.

5.3 Enhancing Security and Control for Digital Sovereignty

Beyond data privacy and reducing dependency, private clouds inherently bolster digital sovereignty through enhanced security and control mechanisms that are paramount for protecting critical national infrastructure, intellectual property, and sensitive government data. The ability to dictate every aspect of the security posture is a cornerstone of this.

• Customized Security Architectures: Private clouds allow for the design and implementation of highly bespoke security architectures that can meet the most stringent requirements of national security agencies or highly regulated industries. This includes control over physical security, network segmentation down to micro-segmentation levels, dedicated hardware security modules (HSMs), and advanced threat detection and response systems that are not shared with any other entity.
• Supply Chain Security: Organizations can exercise greater control over the supply chain of hardware and software components used in their private cloud, reducing the risk of hidden vulnerabilities or backdoors. This becomes a critical concern for governments and defense sectors.
• Incident Response and Forensics: In a private cloud, organizations have immediate and direct access to all logs, infrastructure components, and data for incident response, forensic analysis, and root cause analysis, without needing to depend on a third-party provider’s tools or timelines. This level of autonomy is vital for rapid response to cyber threats and maintaining operational integrity.
• National Infrastructure Protection: For critical national infrastructure (e.g., energy grids, financial systems, telecommunications), deploying private clouds or highly secure sovereign clouds becomes a strategic imperative. It ensures that essential services remain operational and secure, even in the face of geopolitical cyberattacks or disruptions to global public cloud services.

In essence, the private cloud is not merely a technical choice but a strategic one for organizations and nations seeking to assert control over their digital destiny in an increasingly interconnected yet fragmented world. It provides the technological framework to ensure that critical data and digital assets remain within a chosen sphere of influence, subject to a defined legal and governance framework, thereby underpinning the broader goals of digital sovereignty.

Many thanks to our sponsor Esdebe who helped us prepare this research report.

6. Challenges and Considerations

While private clouds offer compelling advantages, particularly in security, control, and compliance, their implementation and ongoing management present a distinct set of challenges and considerations that organizations must thoroughly evaluate before committing to this deployment model.

6.1 High Initial Investment

Establishing a robust private cloud infrastructure typically necessitates a substantial upfront capital investment. Unlike public cloud services, which operate on a pay-as-you-go operational expenditure (OpEx) model, building a private cloud is a significant capital expenditure (CapEx) undertaking. This initial outlay can be a formidable barrier for smaller organizations or those with limited capital budgets.

Key components contributing to this high initial investment include:

• Hardware: Procurement of high-performance servers, storage area networks (SANs) or network-attached storage (NAS) systems, or hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) units, high-speed network switches, routers, and firewalls. The cost scales with the desired capacity and performance requirements.
• Software Licenses: Acquisition of licenses for hypervisors, operating systems, cloud management platforms (CMPs), virtualization management tools, automation software, monitoring solutions, and enterprise-grade security software. These licenses can be perpetual or subscription-based but often involve significant upfront costs.
• Data Center Facilities: If an organization doesn’t already possess an adequate data center, the costs associated with building or renovating one can be enormous. This includes real estate, power infrastructure (redundant power feeds, UPS, generators), cooling systems (CRAC units, chillers), cabling, racks, fire suppression systems, and physical security measures.
• Professional Services: Engaging consultants for design, architecture, integration, and migration services can add significantly to the initial costs, especially for complex environments.
• Talent Acquisition and Training: Hiring or training a specialized IT team with expertise in cloud architecture, virtualization, networking, storage, automation, and security is a critical initial investment. Salaries for such skilled professionals are often high.

Organizations must conduct a comprehensive Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis, comparing the long-term financial implications of a private cloud (CapEx + ongoing OpEx) against various public cloud or hosted private cloud models. The return on investment (ROI) period for a private cloud can be longer, typically making it more suitable for organizations with stable, predictable, and long-running high-utilization workloads.

6.2 Maintenance and Management Complexity

Beyond the initial setup, the ongoing maintenance and management of a private cloud environment are inherently complex and resource-intensive, requiring a high level of operational maturity and a diverse skill set within the IT department.

The complexities include:

• Patching and Updates: Regular application of security patches, software updates, and firmware upgrades across all layers of the stack—from hardware (BIOS, firmware) to hypervisors, operating systems, and cloud management software. This requires meticulous planning, testing, and scheduling to avoid downtime.
• Hardware Maintenance and Refresh: Managing hardware warranties, break-fix operations, and planning for end-of-life and technology refresh cycles. This involves purchasing and integrating new hardware, migrating workloads, and decommissioning old equipment.
• Capacity Planning: Continuous monitoring of resource utilization (CPU, memory, storage, network) and proactive capacity planning to ensure resources are available for growth without over-provisioning or under-provisioning. This requires sophisticated analytics and forecasting.
• Performance Tuning: Ongoing optimization of virtual machine configurations, storage arrays, and network settings to ensure applications meet desired performance benchmarks.
• Security Management: Implementing, monitoring, and updating firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention systems, access controls, and encryption mechanisms. This is a continuous battle against evolving cyber threats and requires a dedicated security operations team.
• Backup and Disaster Recovery: Designing, implementing, testing, and maintaining robust backup and disaster recovery solutions to ensure business continuity in the event of outages or data loss.
• Automation and Orchestration: While private clouds benefit from automation, building and maintaining the scripts, workflows, and integrations necessary for self-service, provisioning, and operational efficiency is a significant ongoing development effort.
• Troubleshooting: Diagnosing and resolving issues across a multi-layered infrastructure (hardware, network, storage, virtualization, software) can be challenging and requires deep expertise.

This operational burden translates into a sustained investment in highly skilled IT personnel, ongoing training, and specialized tools, representing a significant operational expense that must be factored into the overall cost model.

6.3 Scalability Limitations

One of the most touted benefits of public clouds is their near-infinite scalability and elasticity, allowing organizations to rapidly provision and de-provision resources on demand. Private clouds, while flexible within their allocated capacity, inherently face limitations in rapid scalability.

• Fixed Capacity: A private cloud’s capacity is constrained by the physical hardware and software resources that have been purchased and deployed. While virtualization allows for efficient utilization of these resources, the total pool is finite.
• Procurement Lead Times: Scaling up a private cloud typically requires purchasing new hardware (servers, storage, networking equipment), which involves procurement processes, shipping, installation, configuration, and integration. This can take weeks or even months, making it challenging to respond quickly to sudden, unexpected spikes in demand.
• Over-Provisioning: To mitigate scalability limitations and ensure sufficient resources for peak loads, organizations often have to over-provision their private cloud infrastructure, leading to underutilized resources during off-peak periods and increasing the initial CapEx.
• Cost of Incremental Scaling: Adding small increments of capacity can be disproportionately expensive in a private cloud compared to the granular, pay-as-you-go scaling in a public cloud.

For organizations with highly variable or unpredictable workloads, or those anticipating rapid, unforeseen growth, the scalability limitations of a pure private cloud can be a significant drawback. This is where a hybrid cloud strategy often provides a pragmatic solution, allowing organizations to maintain steady-state workloads in their private cloud while leveraging public cloud elasticity for burstable or temporary demands.

6.4 Skill Gap and Talent Acquisition

The effective design, deployment, and operation of a private cloud demand a highly specialized and multi-disciplinary IT team. The scarcity of professionals with comprehensive cloud skills presents a significant challenge for many organizations.

The required skill sets extend beyond traditional IT roles and encompass:

• Cloud Architects: Expertise in designing scalable, resilient, and secure private cloud environments.
• Virtualization Engineers: In-depth knowledge of hypervisors (e.g., VMware, KVM, Hyper-V) and their management platforms.
• Network Engineers: Proficiency in software-defined networking (SDN), advanced routing, firewalls, and network security within a virtualized context.
• Storage Engineers: Expertise in software-defined storage (SDS), SAN/NAS management, data replication, and backup solutions.
• Automation and DevOps Engineers: Skills in scripting (Python, PowerShell), infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools (e.g., Ansible, Terraform), and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
• Security Architects and Engineers: Deep understanding of cloud security principles, compliance frameworks, threat modeling, and incident response within a private cloud environment.
• Database Administrators and Application Specialists: Expertise in optimizing application performance and managing databases within a virtualized cloud infrastructure.

Attracting, recruiting, and retaining such highly skilled professionals is challenging due to competitive salaries and high demand across the industry. Organizations may face increased operational costs due to higher salaries or struggle with a lack of internal expertise, potentially leading to inefficiencies, security vulnerabilities, or project delays. This often leads organizations to consider managed private cloud services or hybrid models to bridge the internal skill gap.

6.5 Obsolescence and Technology Refresh

The rapid pace of technological innovation in the IT industry poses a continuous challenge for private cloud owners. Hardware and software components can become obsolete quickly, necessitating regular refresh cycles to maintain performance, security, and access to the latest features.

• Hardware Depreciation: Physical hardware (servers, storage, network gear) has a finite lifespan and a depreciation schedule. Organizations must budget for and plan the replacement of aging infrastructure every 3-5 years, incurring recurring capital expenditures.
• Software Updates and Upgrades: Staying current with the latest versions of hypervisors, operating systems, and cloud management platforms is crucial for security patches, bug fixes, and new features. These upgrades can be complex, time-consuming, and potentially disruptive.
• Keeping Pace with Innovation: Public cloud providers continuously invest billions in R&D, rapidly introducing new services, features, and underlying hardware. Private cloud environments, by contrast, require organizations to fund their own innovation and integration efforts, making it harder to always leverage the latest technological advancements immediately.
• Compatibility Issues: Older hardware or software versions may not be compatible with newer applications or security standards, potentially hindering modernization efforts.

Managing technology obsolescence requires strategic planning, significant capital allocation for refresh cycles, and continuous investment in IT skills to implement and manage newer technologies. Failure to do so can lead to diminished performance, increased security risks, and a competitive disadvantage.

Many thanks to our sponsor Esdebe who helped us prepare this research report.

7. Future Trends and Evolution of Private Cloud

The private cloud paradigm is not static; it continues to evolve in response to technological advancements, changing business needs, and the dynamic regulatory landscape. Several key trends are shaping the future of private cloud computing, ensuring its enduring relevance in the broader cloud ecosystem.

7.1 Edge Computing and Distributed Clouds

As data generation increasingly shifts away from centralized data centers towards the ‘edge’—where data is produced by IoT devices, smart factories, retail locations, and remote offices—the concept of private cloud is extending. Edge computing requires localized processing and storage to minimize latency, conserve bandwidth, and ensure continuous operation even with intermittent network connectivity. Private clouds are instrumental in this evolution, enabling:

• Local Data Processing: Deploying smaller, localized private cloud instances at the edge allows for immediate processing of time-sensitive data, crucial for applications like autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, and real-time analytics.
• Reduced Latency: By processing data closer to the source, private edge clouds dramatically reduce latency, enhancing the responsiveness of critical applications.
• Improved Security and Privacy at the Edge: Maintaining sensitive data on localized private cloud infrastructure at the edge enhances security and compliance, preventing data from traversing unsecured public networks.
• Hybrid Edge-to-Core Architectures: Data processed at the edge can then be intelligently filtered and aggregated before being sent to a central private cloud or public cloud for deeper analytics or long-term storage, forming a seamless distributed cloud fabric.

This trend transforms the private cloud from a single, centralized entity into a distributed network of smaller, interconnected cloud environments.

7.2 Containerization and Kubernetes-Native Private Clouds

Containerization, particularly with Kubernetes as the de facto orchestration standard, is revolutionizing how applications are developed, deployed, and managed. This paradigm shift has a profound impact on private clouds:

• Enhanced Portability: Containers encapsulate applications and their dependencies, making them highly portable across different environments, including private clouds, public clouds, and edge locations. This significantly reduces vendor lock-in.
• Developer Agility: Kubernetes provides a consistent platform for developers, regardless of the underlying infrastructure, accelerating application development and deployment cycles within the private cloud.
• Resource Efficiency: Containers are more lightweight than virtual machines, allowing for higher density and more efficient utilization of private cloud infrastructure resources.
• Microservices Architectures: Kubernetes is ideal for deploying and managing microservices, enabling organizations to build more resilient, scalable, and independently deployable applications within their private cloud.
• Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Kubernetes: Solutions like Google Anthos, Azure Arc, and Rancher allow organizations to manage Kubernetes clusters across their private clouds, public clouds, and edge locations from a single control plane, fostering true hybrid and multi-cloud strategies built on open standards.

The future of private cloud is increasingly container-centric, offering a more agile and flexible platform for modern application development.

7.3 Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) continues to gain traction as a preferred foundation for private clouds. HCI integrates compute, storage, and networking into a single, software-defined solution running on commodity hardware, simplifying deployment and management.

• Simplified Deployment: HCI systems are often delivered as pre-integrated appliances, significantly reducing the complexity and time required to deploy a private cloud.
• Streamlined Management: A single management pane for compute and storage simplifies operations, reducing the need for specialized storage or network administrators.
• Modular Scalability: Organizations can scale their private cloud by simply adding more HCI nodes, providing a ‘pay-as-you-grow’ model similar to public clouds, but within their own controlled environment.
• Cost Efficiency: HCI can often be more cost-effective than traditional three-tier architectures (separate compute, storage, network) for many private cloud deployments.

Vendors like Nutanix, VMware vSAN, and HPE SimpliVity are leading the way in providing robust HCI solutions that make private cloud adoption more accessible and manageable for a wider range of organizations.

7.4 Private Cloud as a Service (PCaaS) and Off-Premises Private Cloud Growth

The desire for private cloud benefits without the associated operational burden is driving the growth of PCaaS models. This involves third-party providers offering fully managed, dedicated private cloud environments, either hosted within their data centers or even delivered to the customer’s premises (on-prem PCaaS).

• Reduced Operational Overhead: The provider manages all aspects of the infrastructure, from hardware maintenance to software updates and security, allowing organizations to focus on their applications.
• OpEx Model: Shifts the financial model from CapEx to OpEx, similar to public clouds.
• Expert Management: Organizations benefit from the provider’s specialized expertise and economies of scale in managing complex cloud environments.
• Hybrid Flexibility: These services often integrate seamlessly with public cloud providers, facilitating hybrid strategies.

This trend allows organizations to achieve digital sovereignty and control without necessarily building and managing their own complex data centers.

7.5 AI/ML Integration and Specialized Hardware

The increasing adoption of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) workloads is influencing private cloud development. These workloads often require specialized hardware, such as Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) or Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), and massive datasets that are often sensitive.

• Optimized Performance: Private clouds can be purpose-built with the exact GPU/TPU configurations, high-speed networking, and large-scale storage necessary to train complex AI models efficiently, providing predictable performance that may be difficult to guarantee in a multi-tenant public cloud.
• Data Security for AI/ML: Training AI models often involves highly sensitive proprietary data. A private cloud ensures this data remains secure and compliant with data residency requirements throughout the entire AI lifecycle.
• Cost-Effectiveness for Persistent Workloads: For organizations with continuous AI/ML development and training needs, the long-term cost of owning dedicated, high-performance hardware in a private cloud can be more economical than paying per-hour rates for GPU instances in the public cloud.

The future of private clouds will increasingly feature specialized hardware and software stacks optimized for data-intensive, compute-heavy AI/ML operations.

7.6 Sustainability and Green IT

With growing environmental consciousness, the sustainability of IT infrastructure is becoming a critical consideration. Private clouds offer opportunities for organizations to directly control and optimize their data center’s energy efficiency and carbon footprint.

• Energy Efficiency: Organizations can invest in energy-efficient hardware, implement advanced cooling techniques, and optimize power utilization within their private data centers.
• Renewable Energy Integration: Direct control allows for sourcing renewable energy or participating in green energy initiatives to power the private cloud infrastructure.
• Resource Optimization: Efficiently managing and consolidating workloads within the private cloud can lead to better resource utilization and reduced energy consumption per workload.

This focus on Green IT aligns with corporate social responsibility goals and can lead to long-term operational cost savings through reduced energy consumption.

The private cloud is continually adapting, proving its resilience and evolving to meet the complex and diverse demands of modern enterprises and the broader digital landscape. It is increasingly seen not as an alternative to public cloud but as an integral and complementary component of a comprehensive multi-cloud strategy.

Many thanks to our sponsor Esdebe who helped us prepare this research report.

8. Conclusion

Private cloud computing, far from being a relic of pre-public cloud era, stands as a sophisticated and increasingly relevant deployment model in the contemporary digital landscape. Its inherent design, characterized by exclusive dedication to a single organization, provides a compelling value proposition, particularly for enterprises navigating an increasingly complex environment defined by stringent regulatory mandates, escalating cybersecurity threats, and the imperative of digital sovereignty.

This paper has meticulously explored the multifaceted aspects of private cloud computing, commencing with a precise definition that delineates its core attributes, including the underlying technologies of virtualization, orchestration, software-defined networking, and storage. The detailed analysis of its advantages—ranging from unparalleled security and privacy through absolute data isolation and granular control, to predictable performance stemming from dedicated resources, and long-term cost predictability for stable workloads—underscores its strategic utility for specific use cases. These benefits are particularly pronounced for industries subject to rigorous compliance frameworks, such as healthcare, finance, and government, where data residency, audibility, and bespoke security configurations are non-negotiable.

Furthermore, the examination of various implementation strategies—on-premises deployments offering maximum control, hosted private clouds offloading infrastructure management, and managed private clouds bridging the gap between control and operational ease—highlights the flexibility available to organizations. The emergence of bare-metal cloud and private cloud as a service (PCaaS) further exemplifies the market’s response to demands for private cloud benefits with reduced operational overhead.

A significant focus of this research was dedicated to the burgeoning global digital sovereignty movement. It demonstrated how private cloud solutions serve as a critical enabler for organizations and nations seeking to assert control over their digital assets, ensure compliance with evolving data privacy laws (like GDPR, CCPA), mitigate vendor lock-in risks, and bolster national security through enhanced control over critical infrastructure. The private cloud facilitates the creation of a ‘trusted computing base’ within sovereign boundaries, fostering self-reliance and resilience in a geopolitically complex world.

However, it is equally important to acknowledge the inherent challenges. The high initial capital investment, the complexities of ongoing maintenance and management, the inherent scalability limitations compared to hyperscale public clouds, the persistent skill gap in cloud engineering, and the continuous need for technology refreshes represent significant considerations. These challenges necessitate a thorough strategic assessment, a robust financial model, and a long-term commitment to operational excellence.

In summation, the choice of a cloud deployment model is not a binary decision between public and private but rather a strategic imperative driven by an organization’s unique requirements, risk appetite, and long-term vision. Private cloud computing offers an indispensable solution for organizations prioritizing security, granular control, predictable performance, and adherence to specific regulatory compliance and digital sovereignty mandates. As the digital landscape continues to evolve with trends like edge computing, containerization, and AI/ML integration, the private cloud is adapting and reinforcing its position as a vital and enduring component of a comprehensive, resilient, and future-proof multi-cloud strategy.

Many thanks to our sponsor Esdebe who helped us prepare this research report.

References

• OVHcloud. (n.d.). ‘What is private cloud? Definition & Advantages’. Retrieved from us.ovhcloud.com
• BrowserStack. (n.d.). ‘Private vs Public Cloud: Choosing the Right Cloud Strategy’. Retrieved from browserstack.com
• Hitachi Vantara. (n.d.). ‘Private Cloud vs. Public Cloud’. Retrieved from hitachivantara.com
• HPE. (n.d.). ‘What is Private Cloud vs Public Cloud?’. Retrieved from hpe.com
• TechTarget. (n.d.). ‘Public vs. private vs. hybrid cloud: Key differences explained’. Retrieved from techtarget.com
• Rubrik. (n.d.). ‘Private Cloud vs Public Cloud: Understand the Differences’. Retrieved from rubrik.com
• TechTarget. (n.d.). ‘Private vs. public cloud security: Benefits and drawbacks’. Retrieved from techtarget.com
• PhoenixNAP. (n.d.). ‘Private vs Public Cloud: Explaining the Differences’. Retrieved from phoenixnap.com
• Dixeam. (n.d.). ‘Private Cloud Computing | Definition, Advantages & Disadvantages’. Retrieved from dixeam.com
• IBM Cloud. (n.d.). ‘What is hybrid cloud?’. Retrieved from ibm.com
• Nutanix. (n.d.). ‘What is Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)?’. Retrieved from nutanix.com
• Kubernetes. (n.d.). ‘Concepts’. Retrieved from kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/