Every year Forrester publishes our overall cloud computing predictions which occasionally includes one or two private cloud predictions. With current private cloud self-reported adoption at 33% and 55% prioritizing building an internal private cloud in 2014, we thought it was time to create a report that focuses just on this deployment type. This year we published a separate report that features our private cloud predictions across pricate cloud management and infrastructure. The report covers the full descriptions and what I&O professionals should do about it. I covered the management predictions, while my colleague Rich Fichera, covered the infrastructure trends. This year we predict: 

1. Enhanced Virtualization Becomes A Separate Initiative From Private Cloud. Forrester predicts that in 2014, CIOs will bless the separation of these initiatives such that the firm can both use private cloud to embrace the age of the customer and work to advance back-end systems. 

2. OpenStack Becomes A Standard. Forrester predicts that by the end of 2014, OpenStack APIs will become the fourth standard. Over the past few years, OpenStack has grown in functionality and deployments.

3. IaaS+ And PaaS Spark Real Self-Service Adoption. In 2014, Forrester expects that at least 50% of self-proclaimed private cloud adopters will provide self-service access largely due to the influx of IaaS+ and PaaS capabilities.

4. Private Cloud Solutions Will Add Critical Advanced ITSM Capabilities. Forrester predicts that before the end of 2014, major private cloud suites will each also include the following new features:

  • A SaaS service catalog.
  • Multilanguage developer toolkits.
  • Intuitive DevOps life-cycle management to facilitate handoffs.
  • Software license tracking,
  • Simplified compliance settings that follow the workload throughout its life cycle.
  • Mobile application for remote approvals and management.
  • Advanced analytic-based automation tools, rather than just static thresholds.
  • Decision-tree sourcing assessments for initial placement of a workload for real-time comparison.

5. Firms Will Enable True Hybrid Cloud Scenarios But Keep Clouds Isolated. In 2014, private cloud vendors will give their customers the ability to move into the next stages where workloads are portable between environments, applications can be split across environments, and/or one can use public cloud to accommodate excess load during peak usage (cloud-bursting). However, issues like latency, template compatibility, infrastructure/hypervisor components, and application scalability are significant barriers that enterprises must face before adopting these more advanced hybrid cloud models