Clouds tipped to suck up IT spend

Stern Curator| Whatech

The use of cloud computing is growing and by 2016 will account for become the bulk of new IT spend, according to Gartner. “2016 will be a defining year for cloud as private cloud begins to give way to hybrid cloud, and nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017,” Gartner says.

Gartner expects cloud services revenue in Australia to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.3 percent from 2012 to 2017 across all segments of the cloud computing market. It expects software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to have even higher growth rates, 23.6 percent and 24.5 percent respectively.

Ed Anderson, research director at Gartner, said these growth rates were much higher than those for IT spend overall and were being driven by new IT computing scenarios being deployed using cloud models, as well as by the migration of traditional IT services to cloud service alternatives.

Gartner vice president and Gartner Fellow, David Mitchell Smith, said that overall there were very real trends towards cloud platforms and also towards massively scalable processing. “Virtualisation, service orientation and the Internet have converged to sponsor a phenomenon that enables individuals and businesses to choose how they’ll acquire or deliver IT services, with reduced emphasis on the constraints of traditional software and hardware licensing models,” he said.

“Services delivered through the cloud will foster an economy based on delivery and consumption of everything from storage to computation to video to finance deduction management.”

He added: “There is a flawed perception of cloud computing as one large phenomenon. [However] cloud computing is actually a spectrum of things complementing one another and building on a foundation of sharing.

“Inherent dualities in the cloud computing phenomenon are spawning divergent strategies for cloud computing success. The public cloud, hybrid clouds and private clouds now dot the landscape of IT-based solutions. Because of that the basic issues have moved from ‘what is cloud?’ to ‘how will cloud projects evolve?’.”

“The market has experienced a significant shift over the last six months. Medium-size businesses and corporations across industries are not just gathering information on cloud as a business model. They are now consistently delivering on projects and major IT restructures with cloud as a strong foundation.” Said Bennett Oprysa, CEO of BitCloud. “Thinking long-term, the mid-market has also recognised the true value of outsourcing and utilising specialist IT talent. With reduced go-live timelines and increased efficiencies, everybody wins all around,” said Oprysa.

Smith said that while private cloud gets a lot of attention and is today the most popular form of cloud across various sectors, it is not appropriate for all services. While the majority of mid-size and large enterprises will deploy private cloud services over the next few years, he expects that private cloud will be used only for specific services.

“Adoption of cloud computing happens in stages,” Smith said. “The types of applications and workloads to be moved can indicate which stage of adoption is most appropriate.” He said that IT departments should work closely with the business to explore how best the various models of cloud computing – private, public and hybrid could support business goals.