451 Says Commercial Private Cloud Products Present Better Value than OpenStack
451 Research released its latest report focusing on the total cost of ownership for private cloud platforms. 451 says that it compiles one of the most rigorous and comprehensive reports on private cloud, detailing analysis gathered to determine whether public or private cloud has a better value.
451′s report entitled Cloud Price Index: Private Edition provides a closer look at the private cloud ecosystem. Although OpenStack is an open source platform, 451 found that it cost more to operate an OpenStack private cloud versus a Microsoft, Red Hat or VMWare private cloud. The reasoning? Since talented OpenStack engineers are a few and far between, organizations must pony up some serious cash to find qualified engineers.
Competing commercial private cloud solutions were actually found to have a lower total cost of ownership. 451 claims that businesses who have a Microsoft, VMWare or Red Hat private cloud can hire 3% more engineers for their staff and still have a lower total cost of ownership than they would if they had implemented OpenStack.
451 notes that on average, Microsoft, Red Hat and VMWare cost an organization around $.10 per hour to run virtual machines. With OpenStack, that cost is about .08 an hour. Although OpenStack costs 20% less to run on your infrastructure, 451′s report shows that the scarcity of OpenStack engineers has pushed costs past the total overall cost of running a commercial private cloud.
Dr. Owen Rogers from 451 Research writes, “Finding an OpenStack engineer is a tough and expensive task that is impacting today’s cloud-buying decisions.” Dr. Rogers adds, “Commercial offerings, OpenStack distributions and managed services all have their strengths and weaknesses, but the important factors are features, enterprise readiness and the availability of specialists who understand how to keep a deployment operational. Buyers need to balance all of these aspects with a long-term strategic view – as well as TCO – to determine the best course of action for their needs.”
A link to the Cloud Price Index report can be found on 451′s website.
