Salesforce.com has been a steadfast opponent of the notion of a so called 'Private Cloud' because, they insist, with much justification, without the multitennancy inherent in the Public Cloud, the economies of scale don't exist. But there is another consideration in this debate: Security. Many companies and government agencies rightly believe that at least some of their data is too sensitive to be intermingled with other data in the public cloud.
The pressure to keep at least some data fully under the control of the enterprise is making Salesforce.com reconsider their entrenched position. Regulations and institutional paranoia, rational or not, are costing Salesforce.com sales. These organizations need another option from Salesforce.com before they take the plunge.
This is why I predict that Salesforce.com will 'alter' their position this year and offer their version of a 'Private Cloud'. Salesforce.com calls the collection of hardware and servers that form the infrastructure upon which their applications run "Nodes". They have a number of nodes today located around the world. Until now these nodes have been used for redundancy and geographic location reasons. Soon, I predict, Salesforce.com will announce a new node with the express purpose of serving Federal clients that want the peace-of-mind that comes from knowing that the only tenants sharing their infrastructure are also Feds. As a result of this offering their sales to the Feds will increase significantly.
Although this will be a significant change in position for Salesforce.com, don't look look for Salesforce.com to abandon their multitennancy evangelism. It will continue to be a core part of their cloud computing message. But they must take this step to satisfy their customers fears and paranoias.
