Private Cloud

The lines between virtualized environments and private clouds are blurring, and these dedicated environments are increasingly popular on-ramps to cloud application delivery models.

Server clusters running VMware or Microsoft virtualization platforms increasingly look more like clouds. They're provisioned via software and they’re highly agile, with resources controlled through APIs and human interaction kept at a minimum.

At this point, whether procured through a managed host, deployed in a colocation facility, or running on-premises, "any differentiation is mostly academic," Dada said of virtualized environments and private clouds.

"The benefit of the cloud is really the agility," he added, and private clouds allow organizations to "be extremely efficient and agile in a virtual environment, whether you want to call it a private cloud or not."