Survey: Cloud Expansion Drives Need for Management in 2011 
As 2011 begins, cloud computing is gathering momentum for mid-sized and large firms. A recent survey found 80% of organizations with at least 1,000 employees have a cloud service; and more than half report using at least six cloud services.
A recent survey found 80% of organizations with at least 1,000 employees have a cloud service; and more than half report using at least six cloud services.
The survey, which interviewed IT professionals at organizations with 1,000-10,000 employees, was commissioned by CA Technologies and conducted by Management Insight. The sample was collected in September 2010 and is comprised of 434 IT professionals across two regions – North America (273) and Europe (161).
Summary Findings CA’s Cloud, Virtualization Survey
Overall, the study found large organizations embracing both public and private clouds and that virtualization is fostering the confidence and skills needed to encourage further adoption among large organizations to build private clouds.
CA said the survey showed IT professionals “are active in the cloud, and their virtualization efforts are contributing to broader interest in cloud computing.” Results also indicated IT’s shift toward what CA called “cloud thinking” to help align IT decision makers and implementers around common goals of efficiency, flexibility and scalability.
One important conclusion CA’s survey noted was this: “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.”
Download a copy of the full survey:
“The Arrival of ‘Cloud Thinking’: How and Why Cloud
Computing Has Come of Age In Large Enterprises.”
“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,” Adam Famularo, general manager of CA’s Cloud Computing Business said in a statement. “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.”
Living in this duopoly of public and private cloud environments will require enterprises to adapt integration and management to provide end-user services across both types of clouds.”
“The Arrival of Cloud Thinking,”
CA Technologies
Key Trends, Take-Aways from
CA’s Cloud, Virtualization Survey
Drill down into the numbers from CA’s cloud/virtualization projects will grow in number, scale and mission-criticality. Here are some key takeaways:
- Huge penetration of cloud services. More than 80% of enterprises and 92% of the largest enterprises have at least one cloud service; 53% of IT implementers indicate having more than six cloud services.
- Business result driving cloud. The primary incentives for organizations exploring the cloud are to save money (44%) and gain greater cost control (35%). IT staff are incented by increasing efficiency (35%) and a desire to work with the latest technologies (34%).
- Demand for “managed” cloud, virtualization to increase. On average, roughly one-third of x86 servers are virtualized within the enterprise today. Nearly half of these companies (46%) 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.
- Infrastructure and development platforms (IaaS and PaaS) are poised for growth. Some 58% of large organizations already use these services, and 43% say they are considering them. Such use and consideration set up infrastructure clouds as the next wave of cloud adoption.
- Security and control remain cloud concerns. Executives are primarily concerned about security (68%) and poor service quality (40%), while roughly half of all respondents consider risk of job loss and loss of control as top deterrents.
- Virtualization is a valuable stepping stone to cloud. 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.
The survey also found top cloud adoption projects include: collaboration tools; hosted email; antivirus/spam filters; and Web conferencing.
