Cloud Services Revenue Growing Faster Than the Broader IT Market

Photo credit: Nikos Koutoulas (cc)

Greater interest in public cloud services is driving increased rollouts of global cloud services that could affect how many firms run their operations.

Analysts at IDC forecast global revenue from public cloud solutions will reach $47.4 billion this year and grow to $107.2 billion by 2017, an annual growth rate of 23.5 percent.

If their prediction is correct, public cloud revenue is on track to grow five times faster than the overall IT industry, driven by more companies signing up for cloud services for the first time.

Meanwhile, a separate study from CompTIA revealed early adopters of cloud technology are now demanding more benefits and efficiencies from their solutions. They estimate 90 percent of enterprises now have some sort of presence in the cloud. What’s more, more than 60 percent of cloud users have made secondary shifts of infrastructure or applications following their original transition to the cloud.

This means more companies are shifting the type of cloud deployment they use, from public to private or vice-versa, or shifting between public cloud providers as they seek a solution that works best for them.

“Once companies hit a stage where they are using cloud systems as a standard part of IT architecture, they weigh the pros and cons of various providers and models and continually shift to achieve the optimal mix,” CompTIA Research Director Seth Robinson said in an interview with Fierce Enterprise Communications.

This suggests companies are struggling to find the optimum balance between private cloud—which is implemented within a company’s infrastructure and is often under the direct control of the IT department—and public cloud.

The public cloud, by contrast, uses services and networks outside of an organization, with companies relying on the cloud provider for all necessary infrastructure, including servers, storage and networking.

Some have suggested that the public route is the way of the future, with one vocal proponent being Amazon Web Services’ Senior Vice President Andy Jassy. He recently told an audience at the AWS Web Summit in London that private options are “archaic” and less cost-effective than public services.

“What we advise customers is that building a private cloud from scratch is not the right decision right now,” he said. “In 20 years, hardly any companies will have their own data center, and those that do will be much smaller than today.”

Companies may still need to be wary of the public cloud, as there are several drawbacks to this solution that are not present with private solutions.

For instance, companies that keep their cloud systems within their own infrastructure have more control over their solutions and have greater confidence in the security and privacy of the solution—something that may be particularly important for companies in the wake of this summer’s NSA spying revelations.

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/cloud-computing/cloud-services-revenue-growing-faster-broader-market-0633789?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cloud-services-revenue-growing-faster-broader-market