Enterprises Are Embracing Cloud Computing For Evolution of IT Service Delivery

The future is definitely all in the hands of the cloud, so that several large IT companies already have a specific business line dedicated to cloud strategy. Experts predict that by 2020 the spread of the cloud, which allows access to applications via the Web from anywhere (including via smartphone) and at any time, leading to continuous and progressive elimination of the applications on generic PCs.

Analyzing the cloud computing from a critical point of view doubts may arise in regard to the confidentiality of the data and the type of relationship with the service provider, especially in case of failure and/or poor service. This should, however, be governed by the contract linking the company to the service provider.

TheInfoPro, a service of 451 Research, released its latest cloud computing study, which projects big growth of cloud computing in enterprises over the next two years. According to the study, cloud computing will be a natural evolution of IT service delivery and more than 60 percent of respondents expect their enterprise spending will increase in both 2013 and 2014 compared with the prior year. More than 83% of respondents are facing significant roadblocks to deploying their cloud computing initiatives; IT roadblocks have declined to 15% while non-IT roadblocks have increased to 68% since the end of 2012. The roadblocks are mostly related to people, processes, politics and other organizational issues.

As organizations are completing their transition to a virtualized datacenter infrastructure, their focus is switching rapidly to cloud computing projects. Despite this shift of attention and the associated growth opportunity, there are major roadblocks ā€“ for the most part, they are not technology related and fall within the domain of people, process, policy and organizational issues, which are more complex for vendors to address, says the report.

In just the past six months, IaaS and SaaS activity has increased to 30 percent and 33 percent of the projects respectively, mostly in the form of internal, private cloud projects. At the cloud technology level, Microsoft, VMware and Amazon top as the leading vendors, followed by OpenStack that has gained significant market traction in the past year and looks to take significant market share in coming years.

Cloud platform/orchestration stacks followed by cloud performance management, cloud monitoring, and virtual private cloud-based IaaS top the TheInfoPro Heat Index. The study closes by saying that regulatory and compliance issues are biggest barriers for public cloud provider selection and security is still remain the main bottleneck for IT professionals implementing cloud computing projects.

2 comments

  1. Iā€™m glad to see that 451 recognized Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs) as offering the biggest upside opportunity in cloud projects. Working with highly regulated, Global 2000 enterprises on projects to achieve a Cloud Empowered EnterpriseTM, I have seen the tremendous upside a cloud operating model managed with a full
    featured CMP can provide ā€“ from 50%+ reductions in infrastructure costs to 70% reduction in time to market for new applications and services.. To read how one large financial institution leveraged CMP for increased agility and competitive advantage: http://www.forrester.com/pimages/rws/reprints/document/83521/oid/1-LR0VU2

    – Shawn Douglass, CTO, ServiceMesh

  2. There needs to be a distinction made between the public cloud and private clouds ā€“ especially private clouds like the one Amazon is building for the CIA, where the servers are under the control of the CIA, minimizing security concerns. For remotely hosted public clouds, there are still, and will continue to be, legitimate security concerns.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *