Dick Weisinger| Formtek
Businesses are buying into the idea of cloud computing in a big way. A recent Verizon report on cloud computing found that over the last 18 months that the average amount spent by enterprises on cloud services has increased 45 percent.
Among Verizon business cloud customers, they’re reporting a 90 percent increase in the use of cloud-based storage and a 100 percent increase in the use of cloud-based memory. Deployment of virtual machines among their customers is up 35 percent.
The six chief reasons why the trend has been towards the cloud are:
- Cost
- Provisioning speed
- Compliance
- Focus
- Performance
- Accessibility
Verizon reports that the most typical trend they’re seeing across businesses is to begin using the cloud for applications like electronic commerce and email, and once they’ve gained some experience with cloud delivery, to begin moving back-office applications like ERP to the cloud.
The report noted that “organizations are now using the cloud for more than development and testing. They’re running external-facing and critical business applications in the cloud–production applications now account for 60 percent of cloud usage.” ERP applications account for about a quarter of all Verizon customer application traffic.
Verizon sees many organizations reaching a “tipping point” where they’ve begun to investigate moving more applications into the cloud. The report noted that “organisations have seen the benefits cloud can provide – both in efficiency and cost – and are ready to move an increasing number of mission-critical applications to cloud-based infrastructure… However, in order for this to happen, cloud service providers must deliver to enterprise-grade availability and security.”
