And why cloud efficiency begins with people, process, and a clear operating model.
For years, the narrative in tech was clear: public cloud is the future, private cloud is on its way out. Cloud-native innovation meant hyperscaler adoption. On-premises? Old school. But reality today, especially in Europe, paints a very different picture. Private cloud isn’t making a comeback. Actually, it never left.
What has changed is the conversation. Organizations now realize the real question isn’t where your cloud runs. It’s how you run it. And whether you truly control it. Too many organizations still define private cloud as "virtual machines in a datacenter." But cloud, as defined by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), means much more.
According to NIST, a cloud environment must meet five criteria:
- On-demand self-service
- Broad network access
- Resource pooling
- Rapid elasticity
- Measured service
So if you’re just running traditional workloads in a datacenter with no automation, no elasticity, no cost transparency, then you don’t have a private cloud. You have traditional virtualized infrastructure.
Meeting the NIST definition isn’t just a technical checkbox. It’s the foundation for something more important: control. Control over your data. Control over the jurisdiction. Control over the platform. And ultimately, control over how fast you can respond to change.
That’s why private cloud is gaining relevance again. Not just for technical reasons, but for strategic ones. In a geopolitical world where data sovereignty matters, and in complex hybrid environments where consistency is king, private cloud offers control without compromise.
But here's the paradox: even when companies adopt the right platform, many still fail to capture its value. Why?
"Cloud was supposed to be cheaper. So what happened?"
According to Gartner, more than 50% of organizations will fail to realize the expected outcomes from their multicloud strategies by 2029, largely due to lack of interoperability and poor architectural execution. Why? Because they think migrating to cloud is the same as transforming.
It’s not.
A lift-and-shift of VMs to the public cloud will not give you agility. It won't auto-scale. It won't improve developer velocity. Without rearchitecting and replatforming, you're just moving costs to a different place. And often, increasing them.
If your workloads aren't built to scale, if your governance is ad hoc, and if your automation is script-based hero engineering, you’ll hit a wall. Fast.
This isn't a tooling issue. It’s not about whether you chose the right cloud provider or automation script. It’s an operating model issue. And that’s where real transformation begins.
The cloud operating model: what actually drives ROI
The real unlock for cloud success, public or private, is a consistent cloud operating model. It’s the foundation that standardizes how you build, deploy, manage, and govern infrastructure and applications.
It defines:
- How teams provision resources
- How environments are secured and monitored
- How costs are tracked (think FinOps)
- How automation is maintained and governed
- How environments scale across private and public cloud
In short: it's how you do cloud.
This fragmentation isn’t just about infrastructure. It’s about people. Because without shared processes and clear roles, teams drift apart. And so does your cloud strategy. Without a cloud operating model, environments fragment. One team handles private cloud, another manages Azure, a third owns AWS. Each with different tools, processes, and priorities. The result? Inconsistency, complexity, and cost. But with a unified model, you unlock true cloud benefits: velocity, efficiency, control.
People and process before platform
Too many transformations start with tools. The better ones start with clarity:
- Who are your users?
- What are you solving for?
- How will your teams operate the platform?
- How will you ensure security, scalability, and cost control?
You can't automate chaos. And you can’t outsource accountability. That’s why organizations should approach cloud, especially private cloud, with intentionality. Get the operating model right first. Then choose the platform that fits. When you lead with the operating model, everything else aligns faster: security, scalability, cost, and governance.
And the longer you delay that alignment, the more you risk losing your most valuable asset.
Time is your most precious resource
In digital transformation, time isn’t just a constraint. It’s the most strategic asset you have. And once spent, you never get it back.
Every month you delay modernization, your competitors get faster. Every hour your team spends debugging complex, frail scripts or managing siloed infrastructure is time not spent on innovation. And every quarter lost to inefficiency is value left on the table.
The opportunity cost of poor cloud execution is enormous. When engineers spend days rebuilding broken automations or deciphering undocumented environments, that’s not just a technical debt issue. It’s a business risk.
And yet, many organizations treat time like a free resource. They take the long road, building custom platforms in-house, reinventing automation frameworks, duplicating tooling across clouds, all under the assumption that control equals customization. But in most cases, control comes from clarity, not complexity.
This is why the build-versus-buy decision should center on time-to-value. If your organization has the engineering capacity, governance discipline, and strategic patience to build a platform over multiple quarters, then by all means, do it. But if your business needs results in weeks, not years, buying into a platform that enforces consistency and accelerates onboarding can be a smart investment.
Because cloud transformation is not just about architecture. It’s about momentum. And momentum is built when time is respected, guarded, and deployed wisely.
Final thought: clarity over chaos
At the end of the day, it’s not about whether you choose public or private cloud. It’s about choosing clarity over chaos. And that starts with how you define your cloud.
How to actually get value from your Private Cloud
In a new episode of the Private Cloud Café podcast, I share how a clear cloud operating model unlocks control, speed, and long-term value. Listen to the full podcast here.
