Cloud computing is coming of age in large enterprises, according to a new study of North American and European IT professionals. Enterprises are active in the cloud, and their virtualization efforts are contributing to broader interest in cloud computing. The results also indicate a shift toward approaching IT using "cloud thinking," accelerating the uses of cloud computing and helping to align IT decision makers and implementers around common goals of efficiency, flexibility and scalability.
Key findings:
-- More than 80 percent of enterprises and 92 percent of the largest enterprises have at least one cloud service; 53 percent of IT implementers indicate having more than six cloud services.
-- The primary incentives for organizations exploring the cloud are to save money (44 percent) and gain greater cost control (35 percent). IT staff are incented by increasing efficiency (35 percent) and a desire to work with the latest technologies (34 percent).
-- Security and control remain perceived barriers to the cloud. Executives are primarily concerned about security (68 percent) and poor service quality (40 percent), while roughly half of all respondents consider risk of job loss and loss of control as top deterrents.
-- Virtualization maturity leads to more optimistic attitudes toward cloud: Virtualization-intensive organizations are four times more likely to move as many services as possible to both public and private clouds.
-- Attitudes toward public and private clouds align. Respondents cite cost savings, resource efficiencies, flexibility and servicing global users as drivers for public clouds; similarly, cost, scalability, flexibility and manageability are drivers for private clouds. Security is noted as both a driver and deterrent for public and private clouds.
-- Collaboration tools lead cloud deployments at 75 percent, with hosted email, antivirus/spam filters and web conferencing noted as the most common applications being deployed in the cloud by large enterprises.
-- Infrastructure and development platforms in the cloud (Infrastructure- and Platform-as-a-Service) appear to be poised for growth with 58 percent of large organizations already using these services, and 43 percent considering them. Such use and consideration sets up infrastructure clouds as the next wave of cloud adoption.
-- On average, roughly one-third of x86 servers are virtualized within the enterprise today. Nearly half of these companies (46 percent) indicate a "managed" stage of virtualization, with the ability to move virtual machines and manage them for high availability. As enterprises move along the virtualization maturity lifecycle from basic (unmanaged virtual servers), to managed, to advanced (dynamic resource scheduling and consolidated back-up), and on to "cloud-like" (advanced virtual automation, full disaster recovery via virtualization), the applications they earmark for the cloud also begin to shift.
-- Email leads in the managed stage (53 percent); desktop virtualization and databases peak during the advanced stage (30 percent); and industry-specific applications top all others in the cloud-like stage (32 percent).
-- In addition, respondents indicate plans to continue to move mission-critical applications from non-virtualized infrastructure to virtual machines over the next couple of years. Enterprises are running nearly half (47 percent) of these applications on non-virtualized infrastructure today, which will drop by 17 percent in the next two years. Of that 17 percent, 10 percent will shift to public and private clouds.
-- As IT reorganizes itself for more dynamic virtualized environments, the tendency to embrace the cloud rises. Virtualization-intensive organizations are roughly four times more likely to move as many services as possible into both public and private clouds. Overall, the perceptions of cloud computing take on a more optimistic tone as organizations advance their technical infrastructure to support more dynamic environments.
-- When asked to share their viewpoints on drivers and barriers to the adoption of public and private clouds, respondents cite cost as a driver and barrier, suggesting the true impact and relevance of "cost savings" is still unresolved.
-- Drivers of public cloud adoption also cite resource efficiencies, flexibility and servicing global users as key drivers. Deterrents include security, compliance, internal resistance and the perception that public clouds are not suitable for some business applications.
-- Cost and security also confound private cloud adoption, with respondents citing them as both drivers and barriers. Additional drivers include scalability, flexibility and manageability, while complexity, availability and reliability, and slow adoption of new technology are seen as deterrents.
-- Survey participants also provided input on advocates and opponents of cloud computing within their organizations. Senior management (C-level and senior IT executives) are the primary advocates for public clouds, while those with more day-to-day responsibilities over virtualization and servers are seen as the leading private cloud advocates (32 percent of directors of IT operations or senior data center management, 31 percent of virtualization team, 30 percent of server management team). Not surprisingly, the security team topped the list as the primary opponent for both public and private clouds (44 percent and 27 percent respectively), with business unit leaders/managers sharing that attitude (23 percent and 18 percent respectively).
-- Overall, the study confirms large organizations are embracing both public and private clouds. Enterprises are already active in cloud computing. Virtualization is fostering the confidence and skills needed to encourage further adoption among large organizations to build private clouds. Ultimately, living in this duopoly of public and private cloud environments will require enterprises to adapt their integration tools and management philosophies to provide end-user services across both types of clouds.
Comment from Adam Famularo, general manager, Cloud Computing Business, CA Technologies: This study confirms that large enterprises are exploring the benefits of the cloud, and are looking to expand from basic services like collaboration to more complex Infrastructure and Platform cloud services. It validates a trend we predicted, that IT executives are rapidly becoming orchestrators of an IT supply chain made up of internal and external services. With this shift comes a growing need for sophisticated management and security, allowing enterprises to change how they think about IT to reap the full rewards that cloud computing offers - agility, efficiency and scalability.
About the study: This Management Insight Technologies study was executed as a web-based study. The sample was collected in September 2010 and is comprised of 434 IT professionals across two regions - North America (273) and Europe (161). Respondents working for companies that produce cloud computing software were excluded. Qualified respondents had to be sufficiently knowledgeable about their company's IT environments. The screener and sample frame were developed to target a fairly even representation of IT decision makers and IT implementers and of the three company sizes within each region.
Contact: For more details and to learn more about the survey, download a copy of "The Arrival of 'Cloud Thinking': How and Why Cloud Computing Has Come of Age In Large Enterprises" here.
Contact: http://www.ca.com/cloud
Friday, December 17, 2010
Companies More Likely To Virtualize Applications Than Move To Cloud In 2011
Today's enterprise applications continue to grow in number and complexity, and are increasingly business and revenue critical. Recent trends in application development and management, such as the increasing use of service-oriented architecture (SOA), Agile development and the move toward virtualization, are adding to this complexity. In an attempt to wrestle with these new environments, companies are beginning to adopt a collaborative "DevOps" approach to managing mission-critical applications.
According to the survey:
-- Yes to Virtualization, still unsure about Cloud: Respondents indicated greater interest in proceeding with virtualization projects than migrating applications to the cloud, with 54 percent saying they have virtualization projects on dock for 2011. A resounding 67 percent of respondents said they have no plans to migrate their applications to the cloud next year.
-- Rise of "DevOps" approach: Nearly a third of respondents report that they have adopted a management approach where Development and Operations share the same reporting structure and are jointly responsible for the performance mission-critical applications.
-- Agile and SOA continue to grow in 2011: The vast majority of respondents release new capabilities multiple times per year and operate applications built with SOA architectures. In 2011, 49 percent of respondents say they expect to ramp up agile development, and 66 percent expect to leverage additional SOA initiatives for mission-critical apps.
-- Application outages and performance failures may be due to improper app management: In 2010, 88 percent of respondents reported they experienced at least one Severity 1 problem in regards to mission-critical apps, and nearly 50 percent had experienced five or more such problems. This may be due to the lack of performance management tools. The survey found that 37 percent of respondents "fly blind" and use no APM tool to manage their mission-critical applications, while 30 percent use a homegrown tool.
Comment from Jyoti Bansal, CEO of AppDynamics: Application environments are evolving at a rapid pace, and we see enterprises grappling with a continued state of change and complexity as they adopt SOA and agile development practices and make strides toward virtualization and cloud computing. It's heartening to see companies adopt a DevOps mentality to address application performance management, rather than try to manage this complexity from silos within their organization. We've seen many IT teams succeed with this approach. Applications are at the heart of almost every business today and are mission-critical to most. Making sure that enterprise applications perform as expected and that issues can be identified and remedied quickly - regardless the environment - is crucial to the success of any business.
About the survey: AppDynamics conducted the 2011 Application Performance Management Survey, "Apps on the Move," polling 140 IT professionals who oversee application performance in Java or .NET environments. The survey provides a snapshot of application performance practices in 2010 and how these will evolve in 2011.
Contact: http://www.appdynamics.com
According to the survey:
-- Yes to Virtualization, still unsure about Cloud: Respondents indicated greater interest in proceeding with virtualization projects than migrating applications to the cloud, with 54 percent saying they have virtualization projects on dock for 2011. A resounding 67 percent of respondents said they have no plans to migrate their applications to the cloud next year.
-- Rise of "DevOps" approach: Nearly a third of respondents report that they have adopted a management approach where Development and Operations share the same reporting structure and are jointly responsible for the performance mission-critical applications.
-- Agile and SOA continue to grow in 2011: The vast majority of respondents release new capabilities multiple times per year and operate applications built with SOA architectures. In 2011, 49 percent of respondents say they expect to ramp up agile development, and 66 percent expect to leverage additional SOA initiatives for mission-critical apps.
-- Application outages and performance failures may be due to improper app management: In 2010, 88 percent of respondents reported they experienced at least one Severity 1 problem in regards to mission-critical apps, and nearly 50 percent had experienced five or more such problems. This may be due to the lack of performance management tools. The survey found that 37 percent of respondents "fly blind" and use no APM tool to manage their mission-critical applications, while 30 percent use a homegrown tool.
Comment from Jyoti Bansal, CEO of AppDynamics: Application environments are evolving at a rapid pace, and we see enterprises grappling with a continued state of change and complexity as they adopt SOA and agile development practices and make strides toward virtualization and cloud computing. It's heartening to see companies adopt a DevOps mentality to address application performance management, rather than try to manage this complexity from silos within their organization. We've seen many IT teams succeed with this approach. Applications are at the heart of almost every business today and are mission-critical to most. Making sure that enterprise applications perform as expected and that issues can be identified and remedied quickly - regardless the environment - is crucial to the success of any business.
About the survey: AppDynamics conducted the 2011 Application Performance Management Survey, "Apps on the Move," polling 140 IT professionals who oversee application performance in Java or .NET environments. The survey provides a snapshot of application performance practices in 2010 and how these will evolve in 2011.
Contact: http://www.appdynamics.com
Thursday, December 9, 2010
IT Managers See Widespread Private And Public Cloud Adoption
Global IT professionals are creating new job opportunities by increasing collaboration among teams in the data center, and adopting new technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing, but they are also struggling to maintain security and data governance as employees demand more off-site access to networks and information, a study has found.
For example, across the 13 countries in the global study, 52 percent of the IT professionals stated they use or plan to use cloud computing, while much higher cloud adoption rates are predicted in Brazil (70 percent), China (69 percent) and India (76 percent). Across the world, respondents rated the following as their top data center priorities for the next three years: improve agility and speed in deploying business applications (33 percent), better manage resource capacity to align demand and capacity (31 percent), increase data center resilience (19 percent), and reduce power and cooling costs (17 percent).
Workers want flexible access to corporate information from any mobile device, anywhere, anytime, and to the results released in November, which revealed disconnects in worker expectations around information access, IT policies and employee awareness of policies.
Key highlights of the study:
1) Cloud Computing Trends
-- Cloud use today: Across the study's 13 countries, only an average of 18 percent of respondents are using cloud computing today, while an additional 34 percent plan to use the cloud.
-- Top cloud users today: Brazil (27 percent), Germany (27 percent), India (26 percent), U.S. (23 percent) and Mexico (22 percent) top the list of countries that are already taking advantage of cloud computing, exceeding the average (18 percent) across all countries.
-- Future cloud use: A large majority (88 percent) of IT respondents predict that they will be storing some percentage of their company's data and applications in private or public clouds within the next three years.
-- Private clouds: One in three IT professionals said more than half of their company's data and applications will be in private clouds within the next three years. Private cloud adoption was predicted to be higher in Mexico (71 percent), Brazil (53 percent) and the U.S. (46 percent).
-- Timing for public clouds: Of those respondents that will use public clouds, one of every three (34 percent) plan to deploy within one year, and 44 percent predicted their companies would use public clouds within the next two years; 21 percent are expected to do so within two to three years.
2)Virtualization Trends
-- Server virtualization is not yet widespread in production and non-production environments. Only 29 percent of the respondents worldwide have more than half their production servers virtualized, and only 28 percent have more than half of non-production servers virtualized.
-- Top reasons to deploy virtualization: IT professionals cited an increase in IT agility (30 percent) as the top reason, followed by the ability to optimize resources to reduce costs (24 percent) and by faster application provisioning (18 percent).
-- Virtualization inhibitors: The greatest hurdles to virtualization included Security (20 percent), stability concerns (18 percent), difficulty in building operational processes for a virtualized environment (16 percent) and management (16 percent).
-- Virtualization on the rise: The picture changes over the next three years. Almost half of the IT respondents (46 percent) expect that 50 to 100 percent of their production environment servers will be virtualized.
-- IT professionals see big savings from virtualization: Two of five (40 percent) respondents expect a data center cost reduction of between 25 and 49 percent, and another 30 percent expect up to 24 percent in cost savings.
3) Data Center Trends, Concerns, Priorities
-- Top data center concerns: IT managers rated their top data center concerns as security, performance, reliability, and budget for maintenance and management.
-- Top technologies and trends: One out of three IT managers cited mobile access to information as the trend that would most affect the data center, especially in China (47 percent), Brazil (40 percent) and Germany (39 percent). Rated nearly as high were virtualization (32 percent), unified data center fabric (29 percent), desktop virtualization (27 percent) and cloud computing (17 percent).
-- Business trends that will most impact their data centers: IT managers were asked to select all those business trends that would most impact their data center over the next three years. Two out of five (40 percent) stated that increases in applications and data will be the top business trend for the next three years, followed closely by security and risk management (39 percent) and cost reduction (34 percent). Also high on the list were support for a distributed mobile or remote workforce, and a greater use of video and collaboration technologies.
-- Role of the network: About seven of every 10 IT respondents (69 percent) predict an increasing role for the network due to its central position in the data center and its ability to unite and manage resources.
-- Top data center priorities: Worldwide, the top data center priorities for the next three years were to improve agility and speed in deploying business applications (33 percent), better manage resource capacity to align demand and capacity (31 percent), increase data center resilience (19 percent), and reduce power and cooling costs (17 percent).
-- Primary data center strategy: More than one in four IT respondents (28 percent) named a unified data center fabric to unite storage and local area network data traffic as the top technology strategy in their data centers, with 23 percent naming data center virtualization, followed by cloud computing (18 percent), unified computing (17 percent) and desktop virtualization (13 percent).
-- Unified computing: Although unified computing is a very new technology, about one of five (19 percent) IT professionals had already tested or deployed it, while another 41 percent plan to test or deploy a unified computing solution in the next 12 months.
-- Average number of data centers: IT managers indicate that the server capacity of their company is housed at an average of 14 data centers.
4) Data Center Career Opportunities: New Job Roles and Team Collaboration
-- Top career benefits: The trend toward unified data center infrastructure has fostered greater collaboration among formerly separated IT teams and given rise to new training programs, new certifications and new job roles and titles.
-- IT career opportunities: Approximately 50 percent of IT professionals predicted the development of new IT career opportunities over the next three years as a result of cross-training and collaboration among formerly separate teams. More than a quarter (27 percent) cited greater efficiency as the reason for collaboration among IT teams, and 25 percent rated the deployment of new technologies as necessitating closer IT team integration.
-- Career growth: Countries that predicted the greatest development of new IT careers due to cross-training and collaboration were India (59 percent), China (56 percent), Spain (53 percent) and Mexico (53 percent).
-- Job opportunities: Across all countries, 43 percent expect new IT job opportunities opening up due to the latest training and certification programs for data center managers. This was the case especially in China (64 percent) and the U.S. (52 percent).
-- Overall, 41 percent see new career opportunities opening up, with job descriptions and titles such as data center architect and data center manager; leading this trend are China (75 percent) and India (51 percent).
About the study: The study was commissioned by Cisco and conducted by InsightExpress, a third-party market-research firm based in the United States. The study includes two surveys: one on employees, the other on IT professionals. Each survey included 100 respondents in each of the 13 countries, resulting in a survey pool of 2,600 people. The 13 countries were Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States.
Comment from Lew Tucker, Cisco's chief technology officer, cloud computing: The data center is evolving to meet employee expectations for accessing networks, applications and information anywhere at any time with any device. IT professionals worldwide are embracing new technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing, desktop virtualization, and unified data center infrastructure to meet employee expectations while helping their companies meet their businesses goals.
Contact: http://www.cisco.com
For example, across the 13 countries in the global study, 52 percent of the IT professionals stated they use or plan to use cloud computing, while much higher cloud adoption rates are predicted in Brazil (70 percent), China (69 percent) and India (76 percent). Across the world, respondents rated the following as their top data center priorities for the next three years: improve agility and speed in deploying business applications (33 percent), better manage resource capacity to align demand and capacity (31 percent), increase data center resilience (19 percent), and reduce power and cooling costs (17 percent).
Workers want flexible access to corporate information from any mobile device, anywhere, anytime, and to the results released in November, which revealed disconnects in worker expectations around information access, IT policies and employee awareness of policies.
Key highlights of the study:
1) Cloud Computing Trends
-- Cloud use today: Across the study's 13 countries, only an average of 18 percent of respondents are using cloud computing today, while an additional 34 percent plan to use the cloud.
-- Top cloud users today: Brazil (27 percent), Germany (27 percent), India (26 percent), U.S. (23 percent) and Mexico (22 percent) top the list of countries that are already taking advantage of cloud computing, exceeding the average (18 percent) across all countries.
-- Future cloud use: A large majority (88 percent) of IT respondents predict that they will be storing some percentage of their company's data and applications in private or public clouds within the next three years.
-- Private clouds: One in three IT professionals said more than half of their company's data and applications will be in private clouds within the next three years. Private cloud adoption was predicted to be higher in Mexico (71 percent), Brazil (53 percent) and the U.S. (46 percent).
-- Timing for public clouds: Of those respondents that will use public clouds, one of every three (34 percent) plan to deploy within one year, and 44 percent predicted their companies would use public clouds within the next two years; 21 percent are expected to do so within two to three years.
2)Virtualization Trends
-- Server virtualization is not yet widespread in production and non-production environments. Only 29 percent of the respondents worldwide have more than half their production servers virtualized, and only 28 percent have more than half of non-production servers virtualized.
-- Top reasons to deploy virtualization: IT professionals cited an increase in IT agility (30 percent) as the top reason, followed by the ability to optimize resources to reduce costs (24 percent) and by faster application provisioning (18 percent).
-- Virtualization inhibitors: The greatest hurdles to virtualization included Security (20 percent), stability concerns (18 percent), difficulty in building operational processes for a virtualized environment (16 percent) and management (16 percent).
-- Virtualization on the rise: The picture changes over the next three years. Almost half of the IT respondents (46 percent) expect that 50 to 100 percent of their production environment servers will be virtualized.
-- IT professionals see big savings from virtualization: Two of five (40 percent) respondents expect a data center cost reduction of between 25 and 49 percent, and another 30 percent expect up to 24 percent in cost savings.
3) Data Center Trends, Concerns, Priorities
-- Top data center concerns: IT managers rated their top data center concerns as security, performance, reliability, and budget for maintenance and management.
-- Top technologies and trends: One out of three IT managers cited mobile access to information as the trend that would most affect the data center, especially in China (47 percent), Brazil (40 percent) and Germany (39 percent). Rated nearly as high were virtualization (32 percent), unified data center fabric (29 percent), desktop virtualization (27 percent) and cloud computing (17 percent).
-- Business trends that will most impact their data centers: IT managers were asked to select all those business trends that would most impact their data center over the next three years. Two out of five (40 percent) stated that increases in applications and data will be the top business trend for the next three years, followed closely by security and risk management (39 percent) and cost reduction (34 percent). Also high on the list were support for a distributed mobile or remote workforce, and a greater use of video and collaboration technologies.
-- Role of the network: About seven of every 10 IT respondents (69 percent) predict an increasing role for the network due to its central position in the data center and its ability to unite and manage resources.
-- Top data center priorities: Worldwide, the top data center priorities for the next three years were to improve agility and speed in deploying business applications (33 percent), better manage resource capacity to align demand and capacity (31 percent), increase data center resilience (19 percent), and reduce power and cooling costs (17 percent).
-- Primary data center strategy: More than one in four IT respondents (28 percent) named a unified data center fabric to unite storage and local area network data traffic as the top technology strategy in their data centers, with 23 percent naming data center virtualization, followed by cloud computing (18 percent), unified computing (17 percent) and desktop virtualization (13 percent).
-- Unified computing: Although unified computing is a very new technology, about one of five (19 percent) IT professionals had already tested or deployed it, while another 41 percent plan to test or deploy a unified computing solution in the next 12 months.
-- Average number of data centers: IT managers indicate that the server capacity of their company is housed at an average of 14 data centers.
4) Data Center Career Opportunities: New Job Roles and Team Collaboration
-- Top career benefits: The trend toward unified data center infrastructure has fostered greater collaboration among formerly separated IT teams and given rise to new training programs, new certifications and new job roles and titles.
-- IT career opportunities: Approximately 50 percent of IT professionals predicted the development of new IT career opportunities over the next three years as a result of cross-training and collaboration among formerly separate teams. More than a quarter (27 percent) cited greater efficiency as the reason for collaboration among IT teams, and 25 percent rated the deployment of new technologies as necessitating closer IT team integration.
-- Career growth: Countries that predicted the greatest development of new IT careers due to cross-training and collaboration were India (59 percent), China (56 percent), Spain (53 percent) and Mexico (53 percent).
-- Job opportunities: Across all countries, 43 percent expect new IT job opportunities opening up due to the latest training and certification programs for data center managers. This was the case especially in China (64 percent) and the U.S. (52 percent).
-- Overall, 41 percent see new career opportunities opening up, with job descriptions and titles such as data center architect and data center manager; leading this trend are China (75 percent) and India (51 percent).
About the study: The study was commissioned by Cisco and conducted by InsightExpress, a third-party market-research firm based in the United States. The study includes two surveys: one on employees, the other on IT professionals. Each survey included 100 respondents in each of the 13 countries, resulting in a survey pool of 2,600 people. The 13 countries were Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States.
Comment from Lew Tucker, Cisco's chief technology officer, cloud computing: The data center is evolving to meet employee expectations for accessing networks, applications and information anywhere at any time with any device. IT professionals worldwide are embracing new technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing, desktop virtualization, and unified data center infrastructure to meet employee expectations while helping their companies meet their businesses goals.
Contact: http://www.cisco.com
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Hunger for Higher Application Availability Runs Into Cost Concerns
IT groups want uptime assurance and know they need high availability (HA) solutions, but are stymied in their search by a short-sighted view of price and an inadequate accounting of downtime costs, according to a survey.
The survey reveal a consistent ramp up in demand for high availability solutions. Almost 80 percent of responses -- from industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, high-tech and financial services -- have seen a steady increase in applications that demand high availability over the last two years. Forty-one percent consider half or all of their applications to be business critical.
However, when it comes to buying resilient technology to support those needs, those same IT people balk at what they perceive as high availability products' cost and complexity. More than half -- 54 percent -- said HA products are too expensive, require special skill sets, or don't deliver on their promises. Worse, the survey shows the cost of downtime -- a crucial piece of the total cost of ownership calculation -- is often omitted from the high availability discussion. A full 51 percent of the respondents haven't calculated the cost of one hour of downtime. That leaves them no way to establish a cost-benefit ratio to determine if high availability technology is a solid investment. Those who say they measure downtime costs usually cannot actually cite or will underestimate the cost of critical applications going offline.
The virtualization boom still looms over all of these developments. Eighty-one percent run business-critical applications on virtual machines today, and 84 percent expect the number of virtualized critical applications to increase over the next 12 months. Eighty-five percent believe that virtualization can provide adequate uptime for mission-critical applications. However, if the application requires interruption-free processing, virtualization alone can't provide it.
The other hot IT topic of the moment, cloud computing, didn't resonate with the survey audience. Only 15 percent are planning internal cloud projects over the next year. Fifty-one percent aren't planning any kind of cloud implementation through third party providers, and of the remainder only 17 percent are sure about an implementation in the near future.
Comment from ITIC Principal Laura DiDio: There's a lot of misplaced faith in virtualization's high availability potential. Virtualization is not an availability solution. It gives IT a lot of flexibility to use virtual machines to back each other up, but it takes time to bring a new virtual machine online, and any data not written to disk is lost in that time. That doesn't work for highly demanding applications that rely on uninterrupted processing delivered by fault tolerant server platforms.
Comment from Roy Sanford, Stratus Technologies chief marketing officer: Affordable products for uptime assurance are readily available. Many IT organizations' perceptions of high availability solutions are stuck in the conventional cluster era. What may seem cost-justifiable up front quickly escalates in price with more software licensing, code modification, failover scripting, protracted testing, and on-going management complexity. At best, clusters are a failure-recovery technology with marginal availability, and not failure-prevention technology or true uptime assurance.
About the survey: The survey consisted of a Web questionnaire that recorded 367 responses and two dozen in-person interviews from companies in 22 countries. The subjects were small and medium-sized businesses, mid-sized and large enterprises with anywhere from 10 to 1,000 servers and desktops.
Contact: http://www.stratus.com
The survey reveal a consistent ramp up in demand for high availability solutions. Almost 80 percent of responses -- from industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, high-tech and financial services -- have seen a steady increase in applications that demand high availability over the last two years. Forty-one percent consider half or all of their applications to be business critical.
However, when it comes to buying resilient technology to support those needs, those same IT people balk at what they perceive as high availability products' cost and complexity. More than half -- 54 percent -- said HA products are too expensive, require special skill sets, or don't deliver on their promises. Worse, the survey shows the cost of downtime -- a crucial piece of the total cost of ownership calculation -- is often omitted from the high availability discussion. A full 51 percent of the respondents haven't calculated the cost of one hour of downtime. That leaves them no way to establish a cost-benefit ratio to determine if high availability technology is a solid investment. Those who say they measure downtime costs usually cannot actually cite or will underestimate the cost of critical applications going offline.
The virtualization boom still looms over all of these developments. Eighty-one percent run business-critical applications on virtual machines today, and 84 percent expect the number of virtualized critical applications to increase over the next 12 months. Eighty-five percent believe that virtualization can provide adequate uptime for mission-critical applications. However, if the application requires interruption-free processing, virtualization alone can't provide it.
The other hot IT topic of the moment, cloud computing, didn't resonate with the survey audience. Only 15 percent are planning internal cloud projects over the next year. Fifty-one percent aren't planning any kind of cloud implementation through third party providers, and of the remainder only 17 percent are sure about an implementation in the near future.
Comment from ITIC Principal Laura DiDio: There's a lot of misplaced faith in virtualization's high availability potential. Virtualization is not an availability solution. It gives IT a lot of flexibility to use virtual machines to back each other up, but it takes time to bring a new virtual machine online, and any data not written to disk is lost in that time. That doesn't work for highly demanding applications that rely on uninterrupted processing delivered by fault tolerant server platforms.
Comment from Roy Sanford, Stratus Technologies chief marketing officer: Affordable products for uptime assurance are readily available. Many IT organizations' perceptions of high availability solutions are stuck in the conventional cluster era. What may seem cost-justifiable up front quickly escalates in price with more software licensing, code modification, failover scripting, protracted testing, and on-going management complexity. At best, clusters are a failure-recovery technology with marginal availability, and not failure-prevention technology or true uptime assurance.
About the survey: The survey consisted of a Web questionnaire that recorded 367 responses and two dozen in-person interviews from companies in 22 countries. The subjects were small and medium-sized businesses, mid-sized and large enterprises with anywhere from 10 to 1,000 servers and desktops.
Contact: http://www.stratus.com
Rapid Growth Opportunities for Open Source Solutions At Federal Agencies To Consolidate Data Centers
As federal agencies follow their mandate to consolidate their datacenters, both government IT managers and commercial systems integrators (SIs) are focusing on the abilities of open source solutions and open software stacks to help ease this transition, according to a report.
Three of today's major solutions providers are Oracle, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard. The report reviews examples of solutions stacks and potential stack components, including the open source LAMP stack, a system used by government currently that consists of the Linux OS, Apache Web server, MySQL database, and tools such as Perl, PHP, and Python.
Government IT offices should leverage a two- to three-year window of opportunity to help influence the evolution of open source solution stacks chosen by large IT systems integrators (SIs).
The U.S. Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is giving IT vendors more flexibility with the types of software they choose to integrate into their solutions, and IT systems integrators sometimes can bid lower if they eliminate licensing costs. Opportunities exist for systems integrators and IT services companies to select and customize robust enterprise-wide open source solutions to penetrate the government market and capitalize.
Comment from Shawn P. McCarthy, research director for IDC Government Insights: Datacenter consolidation is about much more than just consolidation. It's also about migrating to new platforms, improving IT economics, eliminating unnecessary software licensing fees, and reducing associated management costs. Our research indicates that with federal investment, centralized open source solution stacks have already emerged at government sites. Because of this investment, and because SIs are heavily involved in the consolidation effort, we expect to see rapid growth for some of these open solution stacks.
About the report: IDC Government Insights' report, Technology Selection: Open Source Solutions Will Drive Datacenter Consolidation and Cloud Growth (Document # GI225382), examines how open source solutions are influencing government datacenter consolidation.
Contact: http://www.idc-gi.com
Three of today's major solutions providers are Oracle, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard. The report reviews examples of solutions stacks and potential stack components, including the open source LAMP stack, a system used by government currently that consists of the Linux OS, Apache Web server, MySQL database, and tools such as Perl, PHP, and Python.
Government IT offices should leverage a two- to three-year window of opportunity to help influence the evolution of open source solution stacks chosen by large IT systems integrators (SIs).
The U.S. Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is giving IT vendors more flexibility with the types of software they choose to integrate into their solutions, and IT systems integrators sometimes can bid lower if they eliminate licensing costs. Opportunities exist for systems integrators and IT services companies to select and customize robust enterprise-wide open source solutions to penetrate the government market and capitalize.
Comment from Shawn P. McCarthy, research director for IDC Government Insights: Datacenter consolidation is about much more than just consolidation. It's also about migrating to new platforms, improving IT economics, eliminating unnecessary software licensing fees, and reducing associated management costs. Our research indicates that with federal investment, centralized open source solution stacks have already emerged at government sites. Because of this investment, and because SIs are heavily involved in the consolidation effort, we expect to see rapid growth for some of these open solution stacks.
About the report: IDC Government Insights' report, Technology Selection: Open Source Solutions Will Drive Datacenter Consolidation and Cloud Growth (Document # GI225382), examines how open source solutions are influencing government datacenter consolidation.
Contact: http://www.idc-gi.com
Service Providers Top The List As Cloud-Computing Providers
Service providers have an opportunity to differentiate themselves and add new revenue-generating services by providing public cloud-computing services, a survey has found.
Nearly 12 percent of enterprise workloads will run in the public cloud by the end of 2013. Furthermore, the study found that desktop applications, email, collaboration, and enterprise resources planning are most likely to shift to the cloud. This, in turn, will yield a market for public, cloud-computing services of approximately US$44 billion.
Key facts/highlights
-- Enterprises across many sectors -- including manufacturing, financial services, retail, healthcare, and professional services systems integrators, IT service outsourcers, technical consulting, and public sector organizations -- are seriously considering cloud computing.
-- Cloud-migration decisions are being made at the application level. Most decision makers envision a staged migration to cloud-computing services, beginning with noncritical applications. Enterprise executives believe that no applications should be automatically excluded from migration to cloud.
-- For enterprises, the decision about moving to a private or public cloud is not binary. It hinges on executives' perceptions around security and control, data-center overcapacity and scale, and access to skilled IT personnel. Enterprises will potentially use private and public cloud-computing to manage their IT resources.
-- The study identified a set of target applications for cloud that spans various verticals. Targets for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) include application development and testing, disaster recovery, simulations, data warehousing, and analysis. Targets for software-as-a-service (SaaS) are customer-relationship management (CRM), email, unified communications, web applications and desktop environments.
-- An organizational convergence is taking place across the IT and networking departments within enterprises. A total of 80 percent of the enterprises surveyed have converged, or are in the process of converging, these departments into one organizational structure.
About the study: The study, conducted by Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), investigates the "public cloud" and the desire of enterprises to use external, on-demand infrastructure and applications. Cisco IBSG conducted in-depth, one-on-one interviews with more than 80 enterprise information technology (IT) decision makers from 43 enterprises and public-sector organizations in the United States, the European Union, and India. Additionally, Cisco IBSG interviewed 20 subject matter experts.
Contact: The complete white paper ("Network Service Providers as Cloud Providers: Survey Shows Cloud Provision Is a Bright Option") can be downloaded here.
Contact: http://www.cisco.com
Nearly 12 percent of enterprise workloads will run in the public cloud by the end of 2013. Furthermore, the study found that desktop applications, email, collaboration, and enterprise resources planning are most likely to shift to the cloud. This, in turn, will yield a market for public, cloud-computing services of approximately US$44 billion.
Key facts/highlights
-- Enterprises across many sectors -- including manufacturing, financial services, retail, healthcare, and professional services systems integrators, IT service outsourcers, technical consulting, and public sector organizations -- are seriously considering cloud computing.
-- Cloud-migration decisions are being made at the application level. Most decision makers envision a staged migration to cloud-computing services, beginning with noncritical applications. Enterprise executives believe that no applications should be automatically excluded from migration to cloud.
-- For enterprises, the decision about moving to a private or public cloud is not binary. It hinges on executives' perceptions around security and control, data-center overcapacity and scale, and access to skilled IT personnel. Enterprises will potentially use private and public cloud-computing to manage their IT resources.
-- The study identified a set of target applications for cloud that spans various verticals. Targets for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) include application development and testing, disaster recovery, simulations, data warehousing, and analysis. Targets for software-as-a-service (SaaS) are customer-relationship management (CRM), email, unified communications, web applications and desktop environments.
-- An organizational convergence is taking place across the IT and networking departments within enterprises. A total of 80 percent of the enterprises surveyed have converged, or are in the process of converging, these departments into one organizational structure.
About the study: The study, conducted by Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), investigates the "public cloud" and the desire of enterprises to use external, on-demand infrastructure and applications. Cisco IBSG conducted in-depth, one-on-one interviews with more than 80 enterprise information technology (IT) decision makers from 43 enterprises and public-sector organizations in the United States, the European Union, and India. Additionally, Cisco IBSG interviewed 20 subject matter experts.
Contact: The complete white paper ("Network Service Providers as Cloud Providers: Survey Shows Cloud Provision Is a Bright Option") can be downloaded here.
Contact: http://www.cisco.com
Friday, December 3, 2010
SMBs Are Overworked, Cutting Corners, Engaging in Risky Technology Behavior
Resource-and-cash-strapped small businesses struggling to cut costs in a slow economy are leaving simple cost savings options on the table and putting data at risk, according to a recent survey. The survey uncovered several peculiar - and in some cases alarming -- technology practices including relying on "piggybacking" on nearby WiFi networks and saving critical business files on USB thumb drives.
Small business professionals are stretched thin staffwise, and fierce competition means more and more employees will be working on vacation over the holidays.
More than four in five (85 percent) small business professionals agree they conduct work outside of the office. A clear majority (72 percent) of respondents rarely take an email-free vacation.
To keep up with their hefty workload, many respondents agreed they rely on a mobile device such as a laptop or smart phone. The most preferred devices are laptops (38 percent) and smart phones (31 percent).
Data loss can be detrimental to any business. The loss of critical spreadsheets, marketing material and worse, customer information, can cost businesses a considerable amount of time and money to recover lost data, if at all.
Despite the consequences of data loss, the survey indicates that many small businesses are backing up critical business data using highly disposable and insecure methods:
While 40 percent of small businesses back up files to external hard drives, an alarming 50 percent of respondents said they or their company use USB thumb drives and CDs/DVDs to backup important information.
Other secure and cost-effective means of data storage, such as Web-based cloud storage, were seldom used by the small businesses surveyed:
-- While 43 percent of respondents are at least somewhat familiar with cloud computing, only 13 percent say they are using an online storage service -- the least of all backup methods cited.
-- For many respondents, WiFi in their home or office is the primary means of connecting to the Internet with their company-issued laptop. However, some respondents admitted to connecting to unsecured WiFi networks ("piggybacking") in order to conduct business:
-- 25 percent of respondents reported they or someone in their company piggyback other available WiFi networks to conduct business. Almost one in five senior-level executives (17 percent) and proprietor/owners (17 percent) surveyed say they piggyback on wireless networks.
Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has the potential to bring cost efficiency to any small business through free or low-cost audio and video communication via the Internet. Despite the cost benefits, the study found that:
-- Seventy percent of small businesses are not using VoIP for business calls. Almost nine in 10 (87 percent) small business professionals are somewhat or not at all familiar with the term "unified communications," which is the integration of voice, video, audio and instant messaging tools.
The results of the survey highlight the importance that small businesses place on personal brand reputation and appearance. Revealing the need to make a good first impression in a business meeting or new business pitch, the survey found nearly 70 percent of respondents agreed that the appearance of a laptop issued by a small business is a reflection of that company's commitment to quality and service.
About the survey: The Lenovo-AMD Small Business Tech Survey sought to identify common issues and trends in technology use by small businesses. The survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of Lenovo between October 14 and November 9, 2010, among 722 adults aged 18 and over who owned or were employed by a small business with no more than 500 employees.
Contact: http://www.lenovo.com
Small business professionals are stretched thin staffwise, and fierce competition means more and more employees will be working on vacation over the holidays.
More than four in five (85 percent) small business professionals agree they conduct work outside of the office. A clear majority (72 percent) of respondents rarely take an email-free vacation.
To keep up with their hefty workload, many respondents agreed they rely on a mobile device such as a laptop or smart phone. The most preferred devices are laptops (38 percent) and smart phones (31 percent).
Data loss can be detrimental to any business. The loss of critical spreadsheets, marketing material and worse, customer information, can cost businesses a considerable amount of time and money to recover lost data, if at all.
Despite the consequences of data loss, the survey indicates that many small businesses are backing up critical business data using highly disposable and insecure methods:
While 40 percent of small businesses back up files to external hard drives, an alarming 50 percent of respondents said they or their company use USB thumb drives and CDs/DVDs to backup important information.
Other secure and cost-effective means of data storage, such as Web-based cloud storage, were seldom used by the small businesses surveyed:
-- While 43 percent of respondents are at least somewhat familiar with cloud computing, only 13 percent say they are using an online storage service -- the least of all backup methods cited.
-- For many respondents, WiFi in their home or office is the primary means of connecting to the Internet with their company-issued laptop. However, some respondents admitted to connecting to unsecured WiFi networks ("piggybacking") in order to conduct business:
-- 25 percent of respondents reported they or someone in their company piggyback other available WiFi networks to conduct business. Almost one in five senior-level executives (17 percent) and proprietor/owners (17 percent) surveyed say they piggyback on wireless networks.
Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has the potential to bring cost efficiency to any small business through free or low-cost audio and video communication via the Internet. Despite the cost benefits, the study found that:
-- Seventy percent of small businesses are not using VoIP for business calls. Almost nine in 10 (87 percent) small business professionals are somewhat or not at all familiar with the term "unified communications," which is the integration of voice, video, audio and instant messaging tools.
The results of the survey highlight the importance that small businesses place on personal brand reputation and appearance. Revealing the need to make a good first impression in a business meeting or new business pitch, the survey found nearly 70 percent of respondents agreed that the appearance of a laptop issued by a small business is a reflection of that company's commitment to quality and service.
About the survey: The Lenovo-AMD Small Business Tech Survey sought to identify common issues and trends in technology use by small businesses. The survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of Lenovo between October 14 and November 9, 2010, among 722 adults aged 18 and over who owned or were employed by a small business with no more than 500 employees.
Contact: http://www.lenovo.com
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Security, IT Cost-Cutting To Drive Modernization Of Messaging
With further cost reductions and a "tech refresh" projected for the broader IT market in the coming year, trends in cloud services, virtualization, data loss prevention and encryption security will continue driving greater adoption of modernized messaging infrastructures among Global 2000 enterprises in 2011, according to Sendmail.
While many organizations will continue moving to cloud-based IT infrastructures, demand for migrating certain components of the messaging infrastructure to the cloud will be tempered as a result of numerous security and compliance risks, causing many to opt for hybrid infrastructure solutions instead. Continued adoption of virtualization technologies and the increased demand for DLP and encryption security solutions will be key drivers influencing more enterprises to modernize their messaging infrastructures with Sentrion Message Processors. Additionally, there will be a decline of costly, stand-alone point solutions by Global 2000 companies in favor of a single message processing platform that can be customized to fit specific messaging needs in 2011 and beyond.
In 2011 the following enterprise messaging infrastructure trends will be realized:
-- Cloud Computing to Drive Greater Adoption of Hybrid Infrastructures: Despite increasing demand for overall IT cloud services, the cloud hype within the messaging infrastructure market will be tempered by many compliance and security risks that will prevent enterprises from migrating certain components of messaging infrastructure to the cloud. This will cause many large enterprises to require an intelligent e-mail backbone at the internal layer, and increase adoption of hybrid infrastructures that make use of both cloud services and in-house infrastructures.
-- Increased Demand for Virtualized Messaging Infrastructures: According to a recent Sendmail survey, a majority of companies in 2011 are expected to continue migrating components of their email infrastructure to virtualized environments to improve the efficiency and availability levels of their message delivery operations. As a result, enterprise demand for virtual messaging appliances, such as the Sentrion Virtual Message Processor(TM) (MPV), is expected to continue growing steadily in the coming year.
-- Steady Decline in Traditional Stand-alone Point Solutions: In order to reduce operating expenses and increase efficiencies, more Global 2000 enterprises will modernize messaging infrastructures on a single messaging infrastructure platform with customizable email architectures that allow messaging applications of their choice to be included as add-on options. This approach frees enterprises from having to implement costly and specialized stand-alone email products every few years, and will cause a steady market decline of those solutions moving forward. More specifically, there also will be continued erosion of traditional stand-alone point solutions in the email security space, due primarily to email filtering technologies becoming commoditized. As a result, companies will begin either moving those functions to the cloud or simply adding these applications onto their messaging infrastructures.
-- Stronger Demand for DLP and Encryption Solutions: With new privacy regulations in full effect throughout the U.S. and Europe, there will be even stronger demand for DLP solutions, however, those solutions are expected to focus on networks and storage, not the endpoint. Full DLP implementation is too difficult for most organizations to implement so many will develop a "good enough" solution to protect email and other network-based communications where most policy violations occur. As a result, this will lead to deeper integration with best-of-breed message processing and network DLP solutions. Driven by these same requirements and stronger corporate security policies, the need to provide confidentiality of sensitive information being exchanged is increasing, and driving demand for secure messaging solutions such as encryption. Automated application and policy-driven messaging, combined with a "good enough" DLP architecture will prove to be critical elements for organizations looking to reduce dependence on the end-user for determining what should be encrypted.
Comment from Don Massaro, Chief Executive Officer, Sendmail: There is a market shift occurring in the IT industry today. IT leaders are under enormous pressure to cut costs and fundamentally change the way they approach IT. Looking ahead to 2011, economic conditions are expected to improve and many enterprises with aging IT infrastructures are expected to begin investing in more efficient IT alternatives. As the paradigm shift occurs, and technology trends in cloud computing, virtualization and security continue to emerge, Sendmail is uniquely positioned to win big with Global 2000 companies looking to reduce operating expenses and increase efficiencies with modernized messaging infrastructures.
Contact: http://www.sendmail.com
While many organizations will continue moving to cloud-based IT infrastructures, demand for migrating certain components of the messaging infrastructure to the cloud will be tempered as a result of numerous security and compliance risks, causing many to opt for hybrid infrastructure solutions instead. Continued adoption of virtualization technologies and the increased demand for DLP and encryption security solutions will be key drivers influencing more enterprises to modernize their messaging infrastructures with Sentrion Message Processors. Additionally, there will be a decline of costly, stand-alone point solutions by Global 2000 companies in favor of a single message processing platform that can be customized to fit specific messaging needs in 2011 and beyond.
In 2011 the following enterprise messaging infrastructure trends will be realized:
-- Cloud Computing to Drive Greater Adoption of Hybrid Infrastructures: Despite increasing demand for overall IT cloud services, the cloud hype within the messaging infrastructure market will be tempered by many compliance and security risks that will prevent enterprises from migrating certain components of messaging infrastructure to the cloud. This will cause many large enterprises to require an intelligent e-mail backbone at the internal layer, and increase adoption of hybrid infrastructures that make use of both cloud services and in-house infrastructures.
-- Increased Demand for Virtualized Messaging Infrastructures: According to a recent Sendmail survey, a majority of companies in 2011 are expected to continue migrating components of their email infrastructure to virtualized environments to improve the efficiency and availability levels of their message delivery operations. As a result, enterprise demand for virtual messaging appliances, such as the Sentrion Virtual Message Processor(TM) (MPV), is expected to continue growing steadily in the coming year.
-- Steady Decline in Traditional Stand-alone Point Solutions: In order to reduce operating expenses and increase efficiencies, more Global 2000 enterprises will modernize messaging infrastructures on a single messaging infrastructure platform with customizable email architectures that allow messaging applications of their choice to be included as add-on options. This approach frees enterprises from having to implement costly and specialized stand-alone email products every few years, and will cause a steady market decline of those solutions moving forward. More specifically, there also will be continued erosion of traditional stand-alone point solutions in the email security space, due primarily to email filtering technologies becoming commoditized. As a result, companies will begin either moving those functions to the cloud or simply adding these applications onto their messaging infrastructures.
-- Stronger Demand for DLP and Encryption Solutions: With new privacy regulations in full effect throughout the U.S. and Europe, there will be even stronger demand for DLP solutions, however, those solutions are expected to focus on networks and storage, not the endpoint. Full DLP implementation is too difficult for most organizations to implement so many will develop a "good enough" solution to protect email and other network-based communications where most policy violations occur. As a result, this will lead to deeper integration with best-of-breed message processing and network DLP solutions. Driven by these same requirements and stronger corporate security policies, the need to provide confidentiality of sensitive information being exchanged is increasing, and driving demand for secure messaging solutions such as encryption. Automated application and policy-driven messaging, combined with a "good enough" DLP architecture will prove to be critical elements for organizations looking to reduce dependence on the end-user for determining what should be encrypted.
Comment from Don Massaro, Chief Executive Officer, Sendmail: There is a market shift occurring in the IT industry today. IT leaders are under enormous pressure to cut costs and fundamentally change the way they approach IT. Looking ahead to 2011, economic conditions are expected to improve and many enterprises with aging IT infrastructures are expected to begin investing in more efficient IT alternatives. As the paradigm shift occurs, and technology trends in cloud computing, virtualization and security continue to emerge, Sendmail is uniquely positioned to win big with Global 2000 companies looking to reduce operating expenses and increase efficiencies with modernized messaging infrastructures.
Contact: http://www.sendmail.com
Oracle Users Rapidly Adopting Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is rapidly evolving among Oracle users, a survey finds.
Key highlights of the survey's findings include the following:
-- 29 percent of organizations reported they already have deployed an internal cloud.
-- 37 percent indicated some piece of their organization's workload processing or infrastructure is now available through private cloud services.
-- Private cloud implementation is growing significantly over the next year.
-- With private cloud implementations, respondents highlighted emphasis on "platform as a service" (database and middleware capabilities).
-- Adoption of private cloud services for IT workload processing or infrastructure is outpacing the use of public platform service providers.
-- Security continues to be a concern for public cloud and online application services.
Comment from Andy Flower, President of the IOUG: No puff or fluff, just reality that cloud is in use by our members and essential to companies worldwide.
Comment from Unisphere Research analyst and report author Joseph McKendrick: We expect the trend to private cloud to continue intensifying. Users who are relatively mature in their use of private cloud and who have invested more significantly are reaping cost savings by eliminating duplication, standardizing for operational efficiency and through higher asset utilization.
Comment from Rex Wang, vice president, Oracle Product Marketing: This survey shows that cloud adoption is increasing and that more organizations are interested in private platform-as-a-service clouds.
About the survey: The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), an independent community of more than 20,000 international database and technology professionals representing companies, government agencies and educational institutions, conducted the survey of IOUG members. The survey, consisting of responses from 267 IT Technology Professionals, and Data Managers, was conducted under the IOUG's ResearchWire program by Unisphere Research and sponsored by Oracle.
Contact: http://www.ioug.org
Key highlights of the survey's findings include the following:
-- 29 percent of organizations reported they already have deployed an internal cloud.
-- 37 percent indicated some piece of their organization's workload processing or infrastructure is now available through private cloud services.
-- Private cloud implementation is growing significantly over the next year.
-- With private cloud implementations, respondents highlighted emphasis on "platform as a service" (database and middleware capabilities).
-- Adoption of private cloud services for IT workload processing or infrastructure is outpacing the use of public platform service providers.
-- Security continues to be a concern for public cloud and online application services.
Comment from Andy Flower, President of the IOUG: No puff or fluff, just reality that cloud is in use by our members and essential to companies worldwide.
Comment from Unisphere Research analyst and report author Joseph McKendrick: We expect the trend to private cloud to continue intensifying. Users who are relatively mature in their use of private cloud and who have invested more significantly are reaping cost savings by eliminating duplication, standardizing for operational efficiency and through higher asset utilization.
Comment from Rex Wang, vice president, Oracle Product Marketing: This survey shows that cloud adoption is increasing and that more organizations are interested in private platform-as-a-service clouds.
About the survey: The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), an independent community of more than 20,000 international database and technology professionals representing companies, government agencies and educational institutions, conducted the survey of IOUG members. The survey, consisting of responses from 267 IT Technology Professionals, and Data Managers, was conducted under the IOUG's ResearchWire program by Unisphere Research and sponsored by Oracle.
Contact: http://www.ioug.org
Cloud Computing Maturing, Converging In Coming Years
If 2010 was the year of cloud computing awareness and adoption, the next phase of the cloud evolution will bring maturation and convergence, according to cloud computing experts.
2010 proved that, for many organizations, cloud computing can meet the demand for improved IT efficiency through a virtualized, secure infrastructure solution that is scalable, reliable and can provide organizations higher availability at lower costs when compared to a dedicated IT environment.
The results from an August survey by Yankee Group confirm this trend, with 24 percent of large enterprises with cloud experience saying they are already using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and an additional 37 percent expect to adopt IaaS during the next 24 months.
Comment from Rahul Bakshi, vice president Product Management, Managed Services at SunGard Availability Services: There has been a clear market trend of small and medium sized businesses looking to get out of the business of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure. These companies want to tap into the investment service providers have made in IT tools, automation and elastic technology. As we move into 2011, we see continuation of the maturity of cloud offerings with additional security enhancements, service improvements and convergence of various cloud solution technologies and standards to better address customer needs. These drivers will help accelerate the market adoption of IaaS. A key to growing market interest in cloud is the ROI an organization can realize through cloud adoption. When determining ROI, IT organizations need to look beyond just reducing capital expenditures -- even though major gains can be made there. The analysis should be based on a comprehensive view, considering all aspects required to deliver the solution -- assessing factors such as, are they able to deliver services more effectively and efficiently? And, can they take better advantage of capacity on demand -- like seasonal spikes -- and achieve faster times to market.
When developing an Infrastructure as a Service strategy, here are four key areas organizations should closely consider:
-- Business Assessment. IaaS will not replace everything in an internal computing environment. Just as many companies have a mix of Software as Service like Salesforce.com and internal systems, such as ERP, organizations will take a blended infrastructure approach. A good starting point is for companies to conduct a cloud readiness assessment to determine which applications have the best business and technical case to move to the cloud. Next, develop a roadmap for moving applications to the cloud in an efficient way and mitigating operational risks during the cloud migration process.
-- Security. Just as in the early days of managed services when providers needed to prove to customers they could address both physical and logical security aspects, cloud providers need to demonstrate multiple layers of data protection for enterprise-grade security and application availability. For example, organizations need to look for cloud environments that provide dedicated virtual machines which are logically isolated and protected to secure data across shared fabrics.
-- Compliance. Cloud computing is dramatically increasing pressure on service providers from a compliance perspective. Providers need to demonstrate they have embedded the appropriate services, controls, and procedures to support a customer's compliance requirements and to help customers gain the confidence needed to move applications to a cloud environment. Also, compliance standards cut horizontally -- like Sarbanes-Oxley -- and also vertically with industry-specific standards, such as PCI DSS and HIPAA. A service provider needs to demonstrate its cloud environment and processes address customer needs in both areas.
-- Services and Service Level Agreements. Cloud computing is beneficial when the right services are being offered as part of the solution. While many of the mainstream providers of cloud computing platforms offer an unmanaged, do-it-yourself cloud, some organizations may prefer that managed services, backed by the right service level agreement, be part of the overall solution. An organization needs to evaluate its specific needs as they relate to managed services and consider service a key criterion when evaluating vendors.
Contact: http://www.sungardas.com
2010 proved that, for many organizations, cloud computing can meet the demand for improved IT efficiency through a virtualized, secure infrastructure solution that is scalable, reliable and can provide organizations higher availability at lower costs when compared to a dedicated IT environment.
The results from an August survey by Yankee Group confirm this trend, with 24 percent of large enterprises with cloud experience saying they are already using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and an additional 37 percent expect to adopt IaaS during the next 24 months.
Comment from Rahul Bakshi, vice president Product Management, Managed Services at SunGard Availability Services: There has been a clear market trend of small and medium sized businesses looking to get out of the business of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure. These companies want to tap into the investment service providers have made in IT tools, automation and elastic technology. As we move into 2011, we see continuation of the maturity of cloud offerings with additional security enhancements, service improvements and convergence of various cloud solution technologies and standards to better address customer needs. These drivers will help accelerate the market adoption of IaaS. A key to growing market interest in cloud is the ROI an organization can realize through cloud adoption. When determining ROI, IT organizations need to look beyond just reducing capital expenditures -- even though major gains can be made there. The analysis should be based on a comprehensive view, considering all aspects required to deliver the solution -- assessing factors such as, are they able to deliver services more effectively and efficiently? And, can they take better advantage of capacity on demand -- like seasonal spikes -- and achieve faster times to market.
When developing an Infrastructure as a Service strategy, here are four key areas organizations should closely consider:
-- Business Assessment. IaaS will not replace everything in an internal computing environment. Just as many companies have a mix of Software as Service like Salesforce.com and internal systems, such as ERP, organizations will take a blended infrastructure approach. A good starting point is for companies to conduct a cloud readiness assessment to determine which applications have the best business and technical case to move to the cloud. Next, develop a roadmap for moving applications to the cloud in an efficient way and mitigating operational risks during the cloud migration process.
-- Security. Just as in the early days of managed services when providers needed to prove to customers they could address both physical and logical security aspects, cloud providers need to demonstrate multiple layers of data protection for enterprise-grade security and application availability. For example, organizations need to look for cloud environments that provide dedicated virtual machines which are logically isolated and protected to secure data across shared fabrics.
-- Compliance. Cloud computing is dramatically increasing pressure on service providers from a compliance perspective. Providers need to demonstrate they have embedded the appropriate services, controls, and procedures to support a customer's compliance requirements and to help customers gain the confidence needed to move applications to a cloud environment. Also, compliance standards cut horizontally -- like Sarbanes-Oxley -- and also vertically with industry-specific standards, such as PCI DSS and HIPAA. A service provider needs to demonstrate its cloud environment and processes address customer needs in both areas.
-- Services and Service Level Agreements. Cloud computing is beneficial when the right services are being offered as part of the solution. While many of the mainstream providers of cloud computing platforms offer an unmanaged, do-it-yourself cloud, some organizations may prefer that managed services, backed by the right service level agreement, be part of the overall solution. An organization needs to evaluate its specific needs as they relate to managed services and consider service a key criterion when evaluating vendors.
Contact: http://www.sungardas.com
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