Today, technology pundits are debating about the existence of private clouds as a trusted computing model. While some believe that it is just a myth, other believes that private clouds are likely to melt away altogether. A study by Gartner forecasted that nearly 50% of the companies will use hybrid clouds by the year 2017. 

There are other reports by Forbes that suggests private computing deployment is paving way for the hybrid and public clouds. This brings us back to our original question, is private cloud revolution dead?

Lets dig deeper to take a quick glance at various factors that are likely to cause a decline in the private cloud infrastructure.

In the last few years, private clouds were considered as an ideal cloud hosting solution for businesses of all sizes and shapes. With the evolution of new technological advancements, industry experts believe that the computing model is accommodating new innovations. This, in turn, appears to put other deployment models, viz public and hybrid clouds at the forefront, without putting an end to the existing private cloud computing model.
   
Many argue that cloud formations are likely to evolve as hybrid arrangements, which rest between public clouds and on-premises clouds. But, this is not going to happen in the short term as service providers currently lack common architecture in place. Due to this, private and public clouds will continue to have a deep impact on the enterprises.

This argument can be further backed by a report illustrated by IDC, which suggests nearly $2.1 trillion global expenditure on IT resources this year. Of this, cloud expenditures are expected to hit approximately $100 billion, which only accounts for about 5% of the total IT expenditure. This means the evolution of hybrid clouds to blur the existing lines between private and public arrangements will hold for many years to come.

As far as private versus public is concerned, in my view, public clouds have already matured to a great extent and they are more likely to be replaced earlier than the private clouds. Enterprises would still maintain private infrastructure to keep a control of their hardware & software in a secured environment while realizing benefits like scalability, business agility, per-hour computing, and faster time-to-market.

To conclude, hybrid arrangements are likely to kick-off the private cloud infrastructure farther down the road. With so many legacies at stake, it is impossible to replace private cloud completely in the short-run. However, in the long-run hybrid infrastructure is expected to outshine both public and private arrangements.