Report: Private cloud services expanding

The growing popularity of public cloud services seems to be leading many companies to embrace private cloud computing solutions, according to a recent InformationWeek report.

Many organizations use a combination of public and private cloud services, with the public cloud often serving as a testing ground for new services that a company later incorporates into its private cloud infrastructure, the report said.

According to the report, at least 21 members of the Fortune 100 have adopted private cloud services as part of their IT solutions.

Marten Mickos, CEO of a cloud software provider, told InformationWeek "the public cloud is still bigger than the private cloud." Nevertheless, Mickos said, "we are in an expanding universe." After utilizing public cloud services, "there's a spill-over effect," resulting in increased adoption of private cloud services as well, he added.

According to the report, as many as 77 percent of businesses will deploy private cloud services by the end of 2012.

A growing number of businesses are recognizing the variety of benefits managed cloud services can offer. According to a recent Aberdeen Group study, cloud-based storage solutions enable organizations to recover from IT downtime as much as four times faster than companies without cloud services.