Tag: public cloud

Gartner says public cloud is bigger than Jesus

PAY-Lion-King-cloud-MAINBeancounters at the analyst outfit Gartner group claims that the public cloud just getting bigger, will be worth $200bn in 2016.

After adding up the numbers and dividing by its shoe size, Big G claimed that the global public cloud services market is set to grow by more than 17 percent in 2016.

According to Gartner, cloud services were worth $178 billion in 2015. This is set to increase to $208.6 billion in 2016, higher than the nominal GDP of Portugal.

Apparently all this will be driven by cloud system infrastructure services, which are projected to grow 42.8 percent year-on-year. Cloud application services, one of the largest segments in the global cloud services market, is expected to grow 21.7 percent to reach $38.9 billion.

Sid Nag, research director at Gartner said that the growth of public cloud is supported by the fact that organisations are saving 14 percent of their budgets as an outcome of public cloud adoption, according to Gartner’s 2015 cloud adoption survey.

However at the moment the aspiration for using cloud services outpaces actual adoption and while organisations might be keen to use cloud services, but there are still challenges for organisations as they make the move to the cloud.

“Even with the high rate of predicted growth, a large number of organisations still have no current plans to use cloud services,” Nag wrote.

Ed Anderson, research vice president at Gartner said that his outfit’s position on cloud security has been clear.

“Public cloud services offered by the leading cloud providers are secure. The real security challenge is using public cloud services in a secure manner,” he said.

Hybrid cloud faces challenges, however, and Gartner reported that organisations are concerned about integration challenges, application incompatibilities, a lack of management tools, a lack of common APIs and a lack of vendor support too.

Anderson said that while public cloud services will continue to grow. We also know that private cloud services (of various types) will become more widely used.

“Providers must focus on the top hybrid cloud challenges to be successful in meeting the growing demand for hybrid cloud solutions.”

Public cloud spending to pass $100bn in 2017

cloud (264 x 264)Public IT cloud services spending could sail past the $100 billion milestone in 2017, according to figures from IDC.

Worldwide spending will reach a chunky $47.4 billion for this year, and is expected to reach $107 billion in 2017. The analyst house expects the scale of cloud adoption to grow significantly and rapidly, especially as IT infrastructure at many companies begins to age. According to IDC, systems are becoming so complex and expensive that an alternative – cloud – will be the only way out.

IDC believes that initial hesitation towards privacy and control in cloud are now being addressed, and more competition in the segment is going to seriously lower prices and expand choice of services to potential customers.

IDC cites Google as a company experiencing rapid growth in cloud adoption. Over 5 million are estimated to be using the company’s cloud offering, Google Apps, compared to 3 million in 2009.

Senior IDC analyst Frank Gens believes with the emergence of business as a service, cloud adoption will pick up, and its value with it. “Much of the growth in cloud services is being driven by the increase in deployment options,” Gens said.

“The growing richness of these options is a clear accelerator for overall cloud services adoption,” Gens said. “The emergence of virtual private cloud offerings has helped to shift momentum from dedicated private cloud offerings toward public cloud offerings”.

Businesses ignore BYOD best practice

threeiphonesAcronis and the Ponemon Institute have published the results of a joint survey that suggests most businesses are putting their data at risk because they don’t have the correct policies in place.

Most common was a lack of personal device policies – and even among those that did have these policies, executives were exempted, despite the fact they could be handling the most sensitive company data.

A quarter of those surveyed are, the report says, in “denial” about BYOD trends. 23 percent still forbid personal devices from being on the network.

Alarmingly, almost 80 percent of surveyed organisations haven’t bothered to educate their employees on BYOD privacy risks let alone best practice.

Just 18 percent performed remote device wipes when employees moved on from the company. Similarly, 21 percent required a device password or key lock on these devices.

Businesses are also using public cloud services like Dropbox to store and share corporate data, and many don’t have policies in place for public cloud either. Most of the surveyed companies hadn’t trained employees how to properly use public cloud services.

Acronis’ MD for UK&I, Rick Powles, said that while the BYOD trend is an opportunity for companies, many are negligent. “With policies that manage the flow of data between multiple devices and environments, companies can practice safe BYOD with confidence,” Powles said.

Over 4,000 IT managers were surveyed around the world.