Cisco Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud 4.1 White Paper

For InFrastructure & operatIons proFessIonals 

the Forrester Wave™: private cloud solutions, Q4 2013

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© 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

November 25, 2013 

For the past three years, data from Forrester surveys has shown an increasing level of private 

cloud interest among enterprise I&O professionals.

1

 In 2014, 55% of hardware decision-makers 

from North American and European enterprises plan to prioritize building an internal private 

cloud, and 33% have already adopted private cloud.

2

 Today, private cloud encompasses multiple 

strategies and approaches, which can often lead to confusion around the products themselves and 

the capabilities they deliver.

3

 Now the most common approach to private cloud is through the 

purchase of commercial software (30%) or several private cloud components (16%) that marry 

IaaS software with hardware and existing management tools (see Figure 1). For I&O professionals, 

private cloud is the next step along their virtualization journey, providing improved manageability, 

a way to kick off better automation, and a step toward delivering IT-as-a-service.

4

 For the business, 

private cloud is (or rather, should be) an internal extension to what users experience with public 

cloud. It should also enable higher levels of business productivity when compared to traditional 

virtualized infrastructure. A genuine private cloud enables this through true self-service access 

and full automation, which is monitored, managed, and incented, rather than restricted, by I&O 

professionals.

5

 As this market matures, Forrester sees the emergence of both end user and product 

trends. This report focuses on the current state of private cloud solutions.

Figure 1 The Most Common Private Cloud Approach Is Commercial Private Cloud Software

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

104661

Commercial private cloud software

30%

Building the environment from conventional

infrastructure and automation tools with no

additional purchases

22%

Base: 379 enterprise hardware decision-makers

who are planning/implemented private cloud

Source: Forrsights Hardware Survey, Q3 2013

Using a series of private cloud software solutions

16%

Purchasing a converged hardware/software solution

11%

Open source software (not a distribution)

10%

Haven’t decided yet

10%

Other (please specify) 0%

Don’t know

1%