Private Cloud Options For Businesses Of All Sizes

In the event of a disaster, they can then quickly launch replacement computing capacity to ensure business continuity. And then, when the disaster is over, users simply send their mission critical data back to their data centre and terminate the EC2 instances they no longer require.

According to Amazon, by using Amazon VPC for disaster recovery, companies of all sizes can have all the benefits of a IT disaster recovery site at a fraction of the normal cost.

IBM also has solutions in the private cloud space, having launched the world's largest private cloud computing service in November.

Known as the IBM Smart Analytics Cloud, the service allows clients to build their own private cloud environments and, according to Pat Toole, IBM's chief information officer, runs on a System z10 mainframe computer with 48 processors - 32 processors for production, 18 processors for development and test environments.

The service supports strong VPN cryptography and is capable of handling up to 10,000 secure transactions per second, with redundant backup support. In addition to standard private cloud facilities, IBM is also offering clients the Smart Analytics Cloud - a private analytics cloud solution for enterprises.

In use, the Smart Analytics Cloud is billed as providing easily-consumable business intelligence services, systems and software to help customers efficiently deliver shared business intelligence services across lines of business and functional organisations.

In a recent IBM study of more than 2,500 CIOs around the world, 83 per cent of respondents identified business intelligence and analytics - the ability to see patterns in vast amounts of data and extract actionable insights - as the top way they will enhance their organisations' competitiveness and ability to meet client needs.