With commercial cloud systems, there is no investment in hardware required. This enables start-up businesses to easily test out a new business idea. Whilst commercial cloud services are popular, they charge for CPU usage by the hour, storage, and bandwidth consumed. In a large organization, where many users need to be served, it may be cheaper to purchase hardware to create a private cloud. This article showcases the finest open source projects that provide a key alternative for those who wish to avoid using a commercially provided cloud.