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It’s not just about size. Public cloud is someone’s front office, but private cloud is someone’s back office. I’ve seen only a relative few good back offices, even fewer great back offices. I’ve never seen a back office that was world class, Type A, game changer, best of breed, etc.

Your back room is somebody else’s front room. Back rooms by definition will never be able to attract YOUR BEST. We converted ours into someone else’s front room and insisted on getting THEIR BEST. This is what outsourcing is all about.
Jack Welch, former CEO of GE
From Jack: Straight from the Gut

The economics of back office clouds will never come close to front office clouds.

Just because internal IT providers want to build private clouds that offer the benefits of public clouds, doesn’t mean they can. And just because vendors desire to sell internal IT providers something labeled "private cloud", doesn’t mean it is one.

So I suggest that in order to avoid getting ahead of ourselves, or setting false expectations (and to avoid aiding the growing vendor puffery around "private cloud"), one should read Tom’s title as "(The Desire for) Private Cloud Computing is Real – Get Over It." Only time will tell if the reality of the desire evolves into the reality of "private clouds" themselves.