New Delhi, June 4 -- As enterprises grapple with data sovereignty, cost predictability, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads, the private cloud is quietly staging a comeback. Several companies, including Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE), Dell, and Kyndryl, have announced private cloud offerings in recent times.
A recent study by semiconductor and infrastructure software provider Broadcom showed that for more than half of the respondents, the private cloud is set to become a top priority for deploying new workloads. Private cloud is being preferred for running container and Kubernetes-based applications, along with AI model training, tuning, and inference.
Broadcom's own infrastructure software revenue jumped 47% to $6.7 billion, driven by strong enterprise demand for VMware's private cloud bundles and a shift to subscription-based models, CEO Hock Tan had said in March.
The accelerating private cloud momentum, however, is not without roadblocks. One of the biggest challenges is the skill gap. The report quoted above found that close to a third of the surveyed leaders cited a lack of in-house skills/expertise as a barrier to private cloud adoption.
While public and private cloud systems are both built on similar underlying technologies, the key differences are in the deployment scale, rollout costs and time, levels of redundancies, and size of manpower involved, according to experts.
"The technical skillsets for both are common and transferable. However, the skill differential and shortage are in the exposure to and experience with enterprise contexts and operating infrastructure limitations that define a private cloud," said Kamal Karanth, Co-founder of staffing firm Xpheno.
Additionally, Naresh Singh, senior director analyst at research firm Gartner, stated that the capability gap is more pronounced within traditional infrastructure and operations (I&O) teams. Many IT professionals have deep experience with traditional data centers, virtualisation technologies, and on-premise systems, but they often lack exposure to the dynamic, Application Programming Interface (API)-driven, modern cloud environments. This results in teams being well-versed in maintaining physical servers, using manual processes, and managing siloed systems, while struggling with concepts like infrastructure as code, container orchestration, microservices, and continuous integration/deployment.
"The most critical skill shortages include cloud-native application development (such as microservices and Kubernetes), cloud architecture, cloud security architecture, and cloud engineering or DevOps," he said.
This lack of expertise has serious implications, including delayed project timelines, security vulnerabilities, increased operational costs, and missed business opportunities. The risk of running private clouds with insufficient or inexperienced in-house talent can have implications across enterprise-critical core business functions. The business continuity of an enterprise can be compromised in an insufficiently manned private cloud.
In such cases, many companies turn to external managed service providers (MSPs) to help them cover some of the skill and capabilities shortage. MSPs typically specialise in platforms like VMware, OpenStack, Hyper-V, or Nutanix, and offer services such as infrastructure provisioning, backup and disaster recovery, patch management, security hardening, and performance tuning.
"Managed private cloud platforms significantly reduce the need for deep, infrastructure-level expertise by offloading day-to-day operations such as provisioning, patching, monitoring, and hardware management," said Vishal Kamani, Cloud Practice Leader at Kyndryl India.
Kamani added that a hybrid approach - Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) Model - is quickly gaining traction. Here, consulting partners initially design and operate the private cloud stack, then gradually transition control to in-house teams once capabilities mature.
Upskilling and reskilling
While managed platforms could handle the foundational operational tasks, organisations still require skilled professionals to architect, govern, and integrate cloud systems. To this end, companies are investing in upskilling and certifying their existing workforce.
"81% of respondents are now structuring their IT around platforms vs technology silos, indicating a strong intention to up-skill. 56% of respondents say they are staffed to run large IT footprints making the up-skill pathway a potentially attractive option," said Broadcom India's Vice President Pradeep Nair.
"At the same time, 89% value the flexibility and scalability of private cloud, with multiple deployment options including outsourced partner offerings that can provide scale, ready-made services, or geographic scaling. The combinations available with private cloud are part of the attraction of the model."
Despite growing interest in private cloud, many enterprises remain ill-prepared to run it at scale. The lack of in-house expertise is a technical and strategic risk. Without urgent investment in skills, governance, and operational maturity, businesses risk turning private cloud into a costly, underperforming legacy system.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from TechCircle.