Early cloud adoption focused on migrating on-premises workloads to cloud platforms to unlock a simpler, cheaper, more flexible solution compared to traditional IT.
Organisations were encouraged to adopt a specific – often public – cloud platform; a popular hyperscaler service from a big name with all the bells and whistles. These options offered excellent flexibility, low upfront costs, and all the connectivity and collaboration benefits. But over time, these public platforms have brought their own challenges.
A global survey of IT professionals by Dimensional Research found that, in late 2024:
69% lacked end-to-end visibility of their cloud estate, inviting anxieties around security and data sovereignty.
79% were caught off-guard by rising costs as pay-as-you-go pricing met uncontrolled consumption and growing data volumes.
83% suffered from maintenance delays due to a lack of collaboration between internal and external cloud teams.
96% experienced the negative effects of poor network performance, reducing the efficiency benefits cloud was supposed to introduce.
Critical infrastructure relies on private cloud
These challenges are pressing, but there’s another crucial strategic issue at play: a single hyperscaler cloud environment can rarely replicate the systems it’s meant to replace. Your organisation’s functions aren’t simple or uniform, so over time, your cloud estate grows and can become complex.
Today, 73% of global organisations operate hybrid cloud estates, but doing so isn’t plain sailing. Many report problems managing costs, security, licensing, compliance, and a lack of expertise and resources. Alarmingly, it’s not just some hybrid cloud users that encounter these issues: according to one SAS survey, 99% experience them.
Private cloud has long been a smart choice for organisations in regulated sectors like public services, finance, healthcare, and telecommunications. These companies need reliable cloud capabilities with the right mix of benefits:
Security, privacy and compliance: Sovereign cloud prevents data from being shared with third parties or foreign governments, reducing the risk of security breaches and ensuring compliance with strict regulatory requirements and data sovereignty laws.
Control and customisation: Dedicated infrastructure provides full control over hardware and software, allowing configurations precisely tailored to business needs.
Cost efficiency: Compared to public cloud, private cloud can be more cost-effective for predictable, high-volume, long-term workloads.
Legacy support: Private cloud can host older applications that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to migrate to public cloud.
Performance and reliability: Dedicated resources prevent performance bottlenecks ensuring high availability.
Private cloud isn’t about rejecting public cloud. It’s about recognising that different workloads require different environments. What matters most is having the right operating model to manage those environments effectively.
– Darren Adcock, Senior Product Manager, Redcentric
What can we learn from successful private cloud operating models?
A private cloud that stands the test of time is built on a firm foundation that can adapt to change:
The correct underlying network
Cloud performance and manageability are heavily influenced by your underlying network. If your organisation operates across multiple environments, the network plays a critical role in enabling reliable connectivity, consistent application performance, secure data and service access, and the proper enforcement of security and compliance policies.
Governance models
Any successful workflow needs guardrails to safeguard its use. The problem is, many traditional governance frameworks are manual and approval driven. This slows down access, drives up costs, and can lead to problems with compliance. Some users ace it, while others simply ignore it.
All these focus areas are key, but for many regulated organisations, limited internal resources and skills mean the full benefits are left out of reach. That’s where managed private cloud providers come in.
Managed service providers are nothing new in the industry – in 2025 Flexera reported that 60% of large organisations used one. But not all MSPs are alike. We can help you design and operate a controllable, flexible, predictable and compliant solution to whatever form your organisational complexity takes.
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