Enterprises using the cloud Enterprises using the cloud, even for mission-critical projects, is no longer new or unusual. It’s now firmly established as a reliable workhorse for an organization and one that can deliver great value and drive transformation. That’s according to a new report from Verizon entitled “State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud 2016.” […]
Enterprises using the cloud, even for mission-critical projects, is no longer new or unusual. It’s now firmly established as a reliable workhorse for an organization and one that can deliver great value and drive transformation. That’s according to a new report from Verizon entitled “State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud 2016.” which was released on November 9 2015.
The report finds that “Organizations are using cloud to create new customer experiences, reengineer their business processes and find new opportunities to grow”. In fact, over 69% of the companies surveyed indicated that the cloud had ‘’enabled them to significantly reengineer one or more business processes”. Furthermore, it’s not just cloud users which are evolving. Cloud Service Providers have developed new tools and services which are able to service the needs of all kinds of organizations around the planet.
The numbers are staggering and indicative of how ubiquitous cloud computing has become. A slew of reports in 2015 indicate that the use of cloud services is almost at 100%, indicating that nearly every company is using the cloud in some way or other, no matter how big or small. Verizon believes that “in just a couple of years, significantly over half of all workloads – across companies of all kinds – will be running in the cloud.’’
Simply using the cloud is not enough anymore and significant thought is being given as to how to leverage competitive advantage from your personal strategy. The report defines three broad types of users; the “Skeptics”, who are yet to be convinced of the benefits of the cloud. They are often in very sensitive areas, for example financial management, but their numbers are dwindling. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the “Natives” – organizations that are either cloud-only or certainly cloud-first.
Previously these companies were small start-ups but that is no longer the case and many companies are choosing to buy services rather than servers. Taking a more measured approach are the “Pragmatists”, which includes most organizations today, according to the report. They are “striving to create an enterprise-class infrastructure using standard components from cloud providers tied together using APIs and orchestration services.” The best of both worlds, as it were.
Traditionally, cloud usage has been in the public sphere for non-sensitive workloads that require lots of elasticity. Yet in 2015, there has been remarkable growth in the private cloud due to some major reductions in the barriers to entry. “This narrowing of the price difference between public and private cloud is changing the value equation” and the report believes that the private cloud will become the standard with only “a narrow set of workloads” in the public cloud. Increasingly it’s not just about cost, but about the kind of value that the cloud can add which is affecting these types of decisions. For example, 88% of organizations believe that cloud computing makes them far more responsive to their customers’ needs and 65% say it’s improving operations.
With such a firm reliance on the cloud already established, it’s natural that many companies feel confident enough to deploy mission-critical workloads on the cloud and this trend is set to continue into the near future.
In a nutshell, the report details the adoption of cloud computing moving into the mature phase of growth and seems to project a future where it’s almost inconceivable for a 21st century organization to be operating without the tools that have so rapidly transformed the working world as we know it today.
By Jeremy Daniel