Page 96 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

MANA GEMENT STRATEGIES F O R THE CL OUD R EV OL UTION

systems that can be converted to the x86 architecture and run
in the internal cloud, and many new applications will assume
the x86 architecture is their presumed target. Private clouds
may never achieve the economies of scale of the big public
clouds, but they don’t have to. They only need to be cheaper
to operate than legacy systems.

The process is already well under way. While Unix and the
mainframe remain a presence, the fastest-growing operating
systems in corporate data centers are Windows Server and
Linux, both designed for x86 systems. The trend to consoli-
date more applications on one server through virtualization,
thereby reducing the total number of servers, can be done on
any of the named architectures, but the most vigorous activity

is virtualization of x86 servers. VMware, the market leader,
grew from a start-up to $2 billion in revenues in 10 years.
VMware, Citrix Systems, and now Microsoft produce virtual-
ization products for the x86 servers, with open source products
Xen and KVM available as well. It’s possible to cluster such ma-
chines together and run them as a pooled resource from one
management console, a first step toward the private cloud.

The Steps Leading to the Private Cloud

But why would a company want to build its own private cloud?
Like the public cloud, the private cloud would be built out of
cost-effective PC parts. It would be run as a pool of servers
functioning something like a single giant computer through
a layer of virtual machine management software. Workloads

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