More Than Half of Companies Under-utilizing Cloud Computing Resources

Despite widespread adoption of cloud computing, many organization are not fully leveraging the cloud infrastructure they have implemented, a survey has found. Of the companies using private or public cloud computing, 52 percent have cloud infrastructure resources that are rarely or never used and 47 percent report some or lots of excess capacity.

-- Cloud computing adoption growing: Forty-eight percent of organizations report using or planning to use private cloud computing. One in five organizations (20 percent) are using public cloud computing, and another 34 percent are investigating with the intent to implement a public cloud. Fifty-five percent of companies using public cloud computing, and 39 percent of those using private cloud computing, first adopted cloud computing in 2010

-- More than half of companies under-utilizing cloud computing: More than half of companies (52 percent) report having cloud infrastructure resources that are rarely or never used. Forty-seven percent report some or lots of excess capacity.

-- Private cloud computing used, considered for use for software development and test: Software development is one of the biggest uses of private cloud computing. Fifty-six percent of companies report using or considering to use private cloud computing for software development and/or testing

-- Cloud computing spend to grow in 2011: Among organizations that have implemented cloud computing, spending on cloud-based infrastructure averaged $6,335, or $23.31 per employee, in 2010. That spend is expected to rise to $6,920, or $26.63 per employee, in 2011. Average return on investment (ROI) for cloud infrastructure was reported at 46 percent (however 57 percent of respondents either did not know or could not quantify their ROI on cloud computing).

-- Software development and the private cloud: Software development tasks perceived to derive the greatest benefits from private cloud computing were: System testing, 49 percent; Requirements planning and tracking, 42 percent; Static analysis, 39 percent; Source code control, 34 percent; Defect tracking or deployment automation, 33 percent. Among companies that use a private cloud, 86 percent of respondents said having more visibility into the development team's resource utilization would be somewhat to extremely desirable. When asked about the barriers to development using the private cloud more, respondents reported the following: They feel the need to manage their own processes and environment, 50 percent; Their entire development tool chain is too difficult to get on the cloud, 12 percent; Their brittle infrastructure precludes moving it to the private cloud, 21 percent; We have not yet made it available to them, 18 percent.

Comment from Electric Cloud CEO Mike Maciag: Cloud computing is real and happening, and in the enterprise, private cloud is happening first. But many of those resources are sitting unused. Software development and testing are a perfect fit for private cloud computing, but developers haven't been able to fully leverage the resources available to them because a gap has existed between their cloud infrastructure and the software they need to do their jobs.

Comment from Michael Osterman, founder of Osterman Research: Cloud computing is increasingly an essential component of many organizations' computing resources, and it will become more important in the future. However, a variety of barriers need to be overcome for use of the cloud in software development environments if the cloud is to reach its full potential and provide a better, faster and less expensive environment in which to develop and test software.

About the survey: Electric Cloud, a private development cloud company, and Osterman Research conducted the survey of senior-level IT professionals, including CIOs, directors and VPs. One hundred senior-level software development professionals including CIOs, directors and vice presidents were surveyed. Respondents had worked in an IT function for an average of 9.1 years. The median number of employees at the organizations surveyed was 403. Respondents were selected using a combination of the Osterman Research survey panel and an external provider's survey panel. Most organizations surveyed were located in North America.

Contact: Complete survey findings can be found here.

Contact: http://www.electric-cloud.com/