Cloud Continues to Gain Converts, Take Root in the Enterprise

Cloud computing seems to be on a trajectory similar to that of smartphones and tablets.

One day, only a handful of those on the edge of technology seemed to have an iPhone tucked away in their pockets (or proudly displayed for all to see during after-work drinks) as the rest of us struggled to get our Nokia’s T9 function to work properly. The next day, everyone and their mothers (quite literally, for better or worse) were tapping away on Apple’s latest wonderkind device, Friending your high-school sweetheart (what’s the German word for awkward?).

In fact, worldwide shipments of smartphones surpassed shipments of feature phones for the first time this quarter, according to market research firm IDC. There were 418.6 million phones shipped in total, of which 216.2 million were smartphones. Overall, the phone market is up 16.2 million units compared to the first quarter of 2012.

Now the cloud is experiencing a similar rise in enterprise converts to the technology, according to an article on Forbes.com.

According to a recent survey of 262 enterprise IT and data managers—most with the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), cloud computing continues gaining converts within the enterprise, and is pushing down deep roots within companies that have deployed the approach.

Close to two-fifths of organizations now run private clouds in one form or another, and one-fourth are using public cloud services in an enterprise capacity, according to Forbes. Private clouds are being extended deeper into the organizations that have them — a majority expect to be running most of their workloads in the cloud within the next 12 months, especially platform-as-a-service middleware. In addition, close to one-third of public cloud users report they are employing hosted services to run their private clouds for them.

In the survey, 37 percent of enterprise managers indicate they are running or piloting private clouds, up from 29 percent two years ago. Another 26 percent use public cloud services for enterprise applications, up from 14 percent. Among the public cloud users, 32 percent are employing outside services to host at least part of their private cloud infrastructures.

Some interesting findings from the survey revealed:

Skills and organizational issues are the greatest challenges for private cloud sites. When asked what may be holding back their cloud implementations, 37 percent of respondents say they are lacking expertise or knowledge, 35 percent say they are held back by funding issues, and 32 percent say gaining cross-organization support or participation is an issue.

There are a number of business benefits organizations expect to see from private cloud adoption. A majority, 61 percent, expect to save costs through consolidation/higher asset utilization. Another 44 percent see greater operational efficiencies as a result of their efforts. Elimination of duplication across the enterprise is an advantage seen by 43 percent of respondents.

A majority of private cloud sites, 51 percent, report they have already seen some benefits.

Patrick Burke is a writer and editor based in the greater New York area and occasionally blogs for Rackspace Hosting