Ran across a funny pair of dialogues (from a Niraj J, obviously an app guy!) before and after the adoption of private clouds in a hypothetical enterprise. At least it would be funny if the before case wasn't so painfully true.

Before (edited for clarity):

Applications VP - I need to unarchive some 300 GB of data and then use it for some analytics that I need to perform at least once every month.

Infrastructure Guy - 1GB costs about X $ and 1 LPAR with 2 CPUS is about Y$ per year. You need to multiply this by 5 years to get the ROI calculation for your project.

Applications VP - Wow! Why is the cost 1.7 times Frys?

Infrastructure Guy- Well it is all the overhead - The Company needs to pay guys like us who ensure that additional storage is installed correctly and that your group adheres to all the norms we have established.

Applications VP- OK (whatever ... since I do not have any options!), when can I get it?

Infrastructure Guy- it will take 2-4 weeks after the purchase order is approved and quote submitted.

My only comment here is that it's probably more like 8-whenever weeks in most enterprise shops, not 2-4.

In any case, here's after:

Applications VP - I need to unarchive some 300 GB of data and then use it for some analytics that I need to perform at least once every month.

Infrastructure Guy - Here you go , call this API for Adding Storage and launching an instance. You will be charged by the hour.

Applications VP- Cool, I am charged ½ of what you guys charged me earlier and I have the ability to turn off my meter when I'm done.

Infrastructure Guy - Yes, They have cut down our group, and all my buddies who did not have scripting skills have been asked to go. I guess our overhead is now 1.1 X as compared to 1.7X. Besides if you consider the savings you get by switching your computing off when not needing it , we are probably cheaper than Frys.

On a serious note, this sort of on-demand flexibility will be just as appealing within an enterprise as it clearly has been outside.

Furthermore, I think it's likely to be just as appealing to the operations folks as it obviously will be the applications groups, for two halves of exactly the same reason - it makes life simpler.

It's just a matter of time.

Note that I'm not commenting here on whether the private cloud is built entirely within an enterprise, is provisioned on-demand from an external provider, or both. All of those are possible, and perhaps even likely. This is just to illustrate why people will - and do - care.