Private clouds overshadow public platforms
The rate of private cloud adoption has been gaining momentum as many users prefer to settle for more secure and flexible solutions offered by cloud service providers.
“Private Cloud Customer Report,” which was conducted by Technology Business Research Inc., is the first of three customer-facing research initiatives by the firm, surveying 650 cloud end users across North America, Europe and Asia in order to calculate vendor opportunity, customers and competitive landscapes.
The data in the report, which details customer perception of competing vendors, barriers and drivers of adoption and predicts buyer behavior, helps form a blueprint of private cloud vendors’ competitive strategies over the next five years.
Filling the gaps left by public clouds
In the past, businesses that have adopted private clouds often did so because it filled the gaps left by public solutions. Now, however, many organizations are enticed by private platforms due to their versatility and flexible solutions that are able to quench the demands of more sophisticated cloud users. According to the research, growing requirements of businesses for the cloud will lead to a “29 percent year-to-year increase of workloads run on private cloud solutions, from an average of four in 2013 to 10 in 2014.”
Not only are enterprise demands projected to increase, but revenue generated from private cloud adoption is expected to reach $69 billion in 2018.
“Private cloud has truly come into its own as a delivery mechanism that customers understand and are using to achieve the benefits of cloud where public options are either not available or viable,” said Allan Krans, lead cloud practice analyst, according to the source. “It’s an interesting space because the vendor landscape is so diverse and should evolve tremendously as offerings, regulations and open standards play out over the coming years.”
Global benefits
Worldwide, firms in nearly all sectors are benefiting from cloud adoption, especially from enterprise-class cloud computing solutions. The United Kingdom’s financial sector has been able to bounce back from the devastating blow dealt by the global financial crash in 2008, according to TechMarketView’s “Financial Services SITS Market Trends and Forecasts” report.
Spending on IT services in the U.K.’s financial sector is expected to grow by 3.6 percent each year until 2016, with enterprise cloud software and application services predicted to see three percent growth per year in order to enable central cost control, according to Computerworld UK. Infrastructure-as-a-service cloud offerings will also enjoy healthy gains as more firms look to third-party vendors to help drive down costs.
“It is clear from discussions with both customers and vendors that the sector’s attitude to cloud services has evolved significantly over the past 18 months,” noted the report. “Consequently, we expect that the move to cloud services will represent a major part of the sector’s cost transformation.”
In Singapore, the country’s public health system will be consolidated into a private cloud called the “Consolidated Healthcare Cloud,” or “H-Cloud,” according to FutureGov Magazine. The solution will host all mission-critical systems for every public hospital and clinic managed by Singapore’s Integrated Health Information System, which will provide better support to more than 30,000 healthcare users.
The benefits of private cloud adoption are far-reaching, and extent to which organizations around the world are lowering costs, increasing efficiency and offering enhanced customer support will continue to improve with growing adoption rates.
