ISLANDIA, N.Y., Dec. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Cloud computing is
coming of age in large enterprises, according to a new study of
North American and European IT professionals conducted by
Management Insight on behalf of CA Technologies (Nasdaq: CA).
The group surveyed IT professionals in organizations with
1,000 to 10,000-plus employees, revealing that 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.
Top line results of the study include:
- 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.
Organizations Are Active in the Cloud
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.
"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," said Adam
Famularo, general manager, Cloud Computing Business, CA
Technologies. "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."
Virtualization Maturity is Contributing to Cloud
Thinking
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.
Adoption Polarizes Around Public and Private Clouds
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).
The Cloud is Coming of Age in Large Enterprises
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.
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" at
https://www.ca.com/us/register/activity.aspx?cid=117603.
Methodology
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. The sample was
then weighted to achieve a ratio of 60% IT decision makers and 40%
IT implementers, and 36% Medium (1000-4999 employees), 29% Large
(5000-9999 employees) and 35% Mega (10,000 or more employees)
Enterprises within each region. To assure market-based
representation of each region, the sample was also weighted based
on total IT spend by country per data from the IDC Black Book.
For more information about CA Technologies cloud computing
offerings, visit:
- On the Web: http://www.ca.com/cloud and
http://www.3tera.com
- The CA Cloud Storm Chasers Blog:
http://community.ca.com/blogs/cloud
- @CA_Cloud on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CA_Cloud
- On YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/CATechnologies
- Online Media Kit:
http://ca.com/content/press/CA-3Tera-AppLogic-Media-Kit.aspx
- Cloud Commons Community: http://www.cloudcommons.com
(Logo:
http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100516/NY05617LOGO )
About CA Technologies
CA Technologies (Nasdaq: CA) is an IT management software and
solutions company with expertise across all IT environments – from
mainframe and distributed, to virtual and cloud. CA Technologies
manages and secures IT environments and enables customers to
deliver more flexible IT services. CA Technologies innovative
products and services provide the insight and control essential for
IT organizations to power business agility. The majority of the
Global Fortune 500 relies on CA Technologies to manage evolving IT
ecosystems. For additional information, visit CA Technologies at
www.ca.com.
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SOURCE CA Technologies